Left 4 Dead: Lambs 2 Slaughter
by Mattrocks
Summary: America wasn't the only place to be hit by a zombie infestation. In Auckland City, New Zealand, four teenagers try to survive through the hell that has been unleashed upon their home. Last Part, guys, plus Epilogue! Read and Review, PLEASE! :D
1. Prologue

Foreward:

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Left 4 Dead franchise, nor do I claim that I do. In this story, there are trace elements of Left 4 Dead universe. Those belong to Valve.

This is the story of four teenagers, Blaize (Sonja Ignis) and her little brother, Ben, as well as her friends Siobhan and Norman Skibursky as they try to make their way out of Auckland City alive.

But things aren't as they seem. In Auckland City, the strain of the Infected virus, developing its own mind and calling itself the Sickness, will do anything to stop the survivors from escaping and fulfilling their unknown mission.

This story begins just days before the Infection first outbreaks in America, and two weeks before the actual events of Left 4 Dead. It is the 20th December, 2012, Auckland City, New Zealand, and everything is about to go down the drain.

Please, I'd like to have some good feedback, as all of the writers here on want. I've already completed the story, but I'll be looking at the comments I get for this and adjusting the story accordingly.

Also, the way the Avatar of the Sickness speaks is actually in Chiller text on Word. So, instead, seeing as I can't use Chiller text here, I decided to make do with **underlined and bold** as being what the Avatar of the Sickness speaks.

So, without further ado, here it is. Enjoy :D

-Matthew Co (The Writer)

A/N: The Prologue has now been improved! Enjoy! :D

**Left 4 Dead: Lambs 2 Slaughter**

**By Kiwi Productions**

**(Matthew Co)**

_Prologue: Auckland City, New Zealand, 6:28 AM, 20th December, 2012_

'What the hell?'

Captain Nicholas Cale shook his head as he heard his partner curse. He and Sergeant Cyrus had been tasked to help out some scientists recapture some diseased chimpanzee test subject that had managed to escape from its cage, but he hadn't been expecting this.

One of the scientists was now lying on the ground, a massive chunk of his throat missing. The walls of the corridor were stained with the man's blood, and Sergeant Cyrus now prodded the wound with the end of his assault rifle.

The grooves alongside the wound revealed that the man's throat had been torn out by a set of monstrous jaws.

'This bite doesn't look like anything a human would do,' Sergeant Cyrus piped up from behind his black gas mask. 'Plus, this looks fresh. It has to be that diseased chimp that did this.'

Captain Cale raised an eyebrow and peered at the wound, his weathered brown eyes scrutinizing every detail.

'It's nothing I've ever seen before,' he admitted, running a hand through his military-style black hair, each individual strand springing right back up after his fingers combed through them. He shook his head. 'Cyrus, go get Animal Control in here.'

The sergeant nodded and stood up, his midnight-black "Rough Riders" combat armour and trench coat causing a barely audible squeak before he turned to walk back down the corridor.

'Can't get reception in here,' Sergeant Cyrus announced, consulting his radio. He turned to look back at Captain Cale, who was still staring at the corpse. 'You coming, Captain?'

The captain shook his head.

'Wherever this messed-up chimpanzee is, if it's become used to taking on unarmed scientists, it's going to be in for a big surprise when it tries to jump a New Zealand Army Captain with a fully-loaded assault rifle, that's for sure,' he replied, giving the sergeant a smile. 'Go ahead. I'll be fine.'

Sergeant Cyrus nodded, and he disappeared down the wide corridor as Captain Cale examined the corpse under the dim, damaged and flickering lights that cast an ominous glow along the corridor.

Around a minute after Sergeant Cyrus' departure, he heard meaty thumps from down the other end of the hall.

Looking up towards the source of the sounds, his eyes widened as he beheld a creature twice the size of a man prowling towards him, as if it were a cat. It was only after a few seconds that he realized that this must be the chimpanzee, its huge form just able to move within the corridor without brushing the walls.

But the only way he could tell it was the chimpanzee was because it looked vaguely similar to one. Its black fur was heavily bloodstained, and there were gigantic wounds all over its body, all leaking pus, greenish blood and other disgusting substances.

Large fangs were sticking out of its mouth, and its eyes were glowing red. It snarled, but Captain Cale could almost swear it was speaking. Paralysed with shock, he strained his ears as the creature seemed to speak in a strangled voice.

'**Rise... for the Sickness...**' it said as the lights flickered some more.

Captain Cale raised his eyebrow, confused, when movement right next to him alerted him that the chimpanzee wasn't talking to him. As he averted his gaze from the creature to the body of the scientist, his eyes widened in horror as he watched the corpse pick itself up and bare its teeth at him.

He instinctively rifle-butted the scientist back and shot a few rounds into its face, killing it. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears, adrenaline rushing through him as he stared at the corpse, trying to steady his breathing.

And then he remembered about the chimpanzee.

Turning back towards it, he saw that it was now a meter away from him. He could now smell the creature, the noxious mixture of substances that leaked from its skin almost causing him to gag as he heard the thing snarl at him. The smell was so strong that it surrounded the creature in a miasma that assaulted even the pores of his skin, a sick feeling overwhelming him as he felt his skin crawl.

He fell to his knees and began to cough violently, the miasma crushing his insides like a vice and sapping his strength.

Despite this, he started to lift his assault rifle with what remained of his strength to fire at the creature. His index finger squeezed the trigger, but then an almost deafening inhuman scream pierced the air, and the thing leapt at him.

**********

Miles away, in Hamilton, in a cosy, wooden hall, Sonja Ignis stared out of a window, caught up in her own thoughts.

'So Sonja,' Ben Ignis asked her, 'you reckon Mum and Dad are gonna be back home before Christmas?'

Sonja averted her gaze from the window on her left. On the opposite side of the wooden rectangular table, her younger brother by two years tilted his head towards her with eyebrows raised, his blue eyes looking at her expectantly.

There were two other teenagers at the table, waiting for an answer as well; Norman Skibursky, who was sitting next to Ben, and sitting next to Sonja, his younger sister of two days, Siobhan, or, as Norman, Ben and Sonja liked to call her, "Sio-b".

'Nope,' she replied. 'They're staying in America with Grandpa Bill in Fairfield for another week, remember?'

'Rats,' Ben said, scratching his head, dislodging a few visible particles of dandruff. 'A few more nights at St. Mons, then.'

'Well, what's so wrong with staying at St. Monica's College, anyway, Ben?' Norman piped up, scratching the chocolate-brown hair on his head, his clear, handsome face inquisitive. 'I mean, at least you get to spend Christmas with me and Siob.'

'Yeah,' Siobhan added, nodding at Ben before looking at Sonja with her green eyes, her smiling face made more attractive by the freckles that were sprinkled across her nose. 'It'll be the first time you've spent Christmas with us, that's for sure.'

Sonja nodded in agreement. Although she'd been best friends with Norman and Siobhan since kindergarten, she'd never stayed with them at Christmas before.

'Yeah, yeah, but still, Mum and Dad said they'd be bringing presents back with them,' Ben argued. 'Plus, the food at the boarding hostel sucks – it's only when the parents come for lunch that they bring out the good stuff.'

Any further argument was briefly interrupted by the sound of the kettle whistling loudly in the kitchen in the opposite corner of the hall. Norman stood up and went to turn it off as Sonja looked back out the window at the snow outside and sighed. Siobhan and Ben continued on with their debate, unaware that Sonja wasn't listening.

Her attention was dragged back inside again a couple of minutes later as the clinking of mugs and the sweet aroma of hot chocolate announced Norman's return.

Turning back towards the table, she waited as Norman gave one of the mugs to Ben, who downed it quickly, before giving the next to her. She gratefully accepted it and wrapped her hands around the mug, feeling it warm her fingers and dispelling the cold seeping through the window.

New Zealand had never been this cold during summer before. Norman reckoned it was because of the whole "2012 Apocalypse" thing. Siobhan said it was probably the massive efforts to reverse global warming working better than intended, as apparently the world was actually headed into another Ice Age until global warming reversed it, and Ben simply didn't give a damn, just glad that the hall was well-heated.

'Blaze, do you really think that the hostel food is that bad?' Siobhan asked Sonja after taking a sip from her hot chocolate, brushing aside a few strands of her shoulder-length hair that had swung in front of her face behind her ear.

Ben snorted at the nickname Siobhan had given Sonja.

'You're calling Sonja _Blaze?_' Ben asked in mild disbelief, wiping off the hot chocolate moustache that had formed around his mouth using the sleeve of his red shirt.

'Well,' Norman started, scratching his head again, 'it suits her _fine_.' He took out a pencil from one of his pockets and grabbed a stray serviette, drew a circle and wrote the word "BLAZE" in the middle of it. 'I mean, first off, she's got those charming eyes of hers… well, who else has red irises? Anyways, she's got the long, natural crimson-red hair, she's hot- yes, Siob, I can see you giving me that look - and because, well, she likes fire. A tad bit, anyways. 'Nuff said.'

Inside, Norman sighed. Somehow, those red eyes of Sonja's had a charm that he couldn't resist. Oh, he'd tried to make her his girlfriend last year, but to his surprise, his own charms weren't enough. In fact, the crowning irony was that out of all the girls in St. Monica's, she was the only one impervious to him.

Sonja smirked approvingly at Norman as he quickly wrote down the reasons around the nickname itself on the serviette.

'Y'know, Norm, I think I'm gonna change the spelling a _little_ bit…' she said, taking the pencil from Norman and inserting an "I" between the "A" and "Z". 'See? _That_ looks better now, doesn't it?'

She gave Norman a smug look and took another sip as he raised an eyebrow at her. She closed her eyes and felt the warm, sweet liquid rush down her throat, nicely warming her up from the inside, the debate about St. Monica's food forgotten.

'Y'know, I honestly think this trip wasn't exactly that good…' Ben said after a few seconds of peaceful silence.

'That's because it's a Year 14 _science_ _trip_, Ben,' Norman replied. 'Not a vacation.'

'That it is,' Siobhan agreed before turning her gaze at Ben. 'You're still in Year 12, and you're a long way off from the accelerate Science class.' She paused. 'I'd been meaning to ask – how come you're here with us, anyways?'

Ben shrugged.

'It was either come along and agree to behave on this and the next few trips, or be left behind with all sorts of flammable stuff back at the boarding hostel,' he replied. 'Principal Sherman prolly wanted more time to hide the lighters and matches away before I came back – most likely because of that _awesome_ stunt I pulled earlier this year.'

A big grin crossed his face as he remembered that day.

_Mr. Christopher Pebbleford paced around the science classroom, watching each of his students as they dissected their rats for Practical. His large glasses sheltered a pair of sharp blue eyes as he ran a few fingers through his long grey beard, witnessing each student doing as ordered._

_A smile of satisfaction crossed his face until he arrived at Ben Ignis' section of the lab. The troublemaker, the grizzled teacher knew, had originally tried out for Chemistry, but Mr. Rill wasn't having any of it._

_All the Science teachers at St. Monica's College knew Ben was a pyromaniac. The last thing they needed was to put the boy in a room everyday surrounded by flammable chemicals._

_Right now, Ben had been suspiciously quiet, especially considering his usual personality, and although Mr. Pebbleford wouldn't admit it, the boy was scaring him._

_Walking up to Ben's station, he saw to his surprise that his notes were filled out and that the boy was now stitching up the rat back together with some rough string._

_'What is this, Mister Ignis?' Mr. Pebbleford asked him. Ben simply shrugged._

_'Nothin', sir,' he reported as he put the last of the stitches in place. 'Nothin' at all. I did the notes, sir.'_

_Seemingly pleased with his handiwork, Ben grabbed his rat and started walking towards the bin._

_Wondering to himself why his student would work unnecessarily hard on a dissected rodent and then throw it away, Mr. Pebbleford looked at Ben's station-_

_-and then he saw it. Out of the corner of his eye as Ben walked, the teacher could spot a length of string leading out of the dead rat's arse, just below its tail. And at the station, he saw the bottle. On it the words "GUNPOWDER – Teacher's Use Only" could be read._

_It was with horror that Mr. Pebbleford realized that Ben Ignis had no intention of throwing the rat away. The classroom bin was situated right next to the exit, and he now saw the lighter Ben now held in his other hand._

_Ben was only a few steps from the door when he heard "The Chrissy" scream his name. _

_Taking it as a cue to leg it, he immediately bolted out of the classroom and into the school's Upper Courtyard, lit the makeshift fuse he'd attached to the rat and flung the poor rodent into Principal Sherman's personal flower bed._

_As the rat landed amongst the assorted pansies with a meaty thump, Mr. Christopher Pebbleford and the rest of the class arrived. A few seconds passed, and Ben realized that the fuse probably wasn't attached properly._

_'Benjamin Neal Ignis!' The Chrissy huffed, his face red with rage. 'Do you realize that what you almost did was simply-'_

_Boom._

_The Science teacher was interrupted as Ben's makeshift rat-grenade went off at last, combusting in a spectacular explosion of dirt, shredded pansies and chunks of rat that sounded similar to a mortar shell landing._

_As a cheer went up from the assorted students, Ben punched the air in triumph and malicious glee as students and teachers from other classrooms emerged to see what had happened. Principal Sherman had very bad taste when it came to flowers – Ben reckoned he'd done the school a favour._

_The head of his rat, miraculously intact, landed on the concrete next to Ben's feet, and he crouched down and looked at it. Its eyes were looking into his blue ones almost approvingly as he burst out laughing in hysterics._

_'Ahahaha…. Oh, they're gonna have to glue _you_ back together…' he chuckled, '_…IN HELL!_'_

_A grin crossed his face that, for the weeks to come, persevered despite the three Friday After-School Detentions and the very-near expulsion the Principal himself had slapped him with, saved from full expulsion by a hair-width for reasons undisclosed._

Blaize just smirked. She could remember the reprimanding Ben had received from both their parents. It definitely wasn't something he wanted to experience again, she was sure.

'Mmmmmhm. _Sure_. We all know it's actually because you wouldn't last a second without your big sister to watch over you to stop you from setting the house and school on fire again, now isn't it?'

Ben bristled, knocked rudely out of his glorious memory by Blaize's remark.

'I can take care of myself!' he protested. 'You just wait and see!'

'Notice how he doesn't mention not setting the house on fire again,' Siobhan smirked at Blaize, much to Ben's torment.

'Nah. That's old news, isn't it?' Norman interjected, defending Ben the best he could – subtly.

'That he's a pyromaniac? _Hardly_. Setting the house on fire the past few years over and over again simply _doesn't_ get old, now does it?'

'A pyromaniac I may be, but at least I don't suffer from logorrhoea,' Ben retorted. Siobhan whistled.

'I didn't know you could pronounce long words like that, Ben,' she teased him, giving him a smile to show she didn't mean it. She turned back towards Blaize. 'On the subject of news, Blaize, did you see this morning's news, by chance?'

Blaize inhaled deeply through her nose, opened her eyes and looked at Siobhan.

'After almost sixteen years of knowing me, you still haven't realized that I don't watch the news at all?' she said. She only received a shrug from Siobhan. 'So, what's so special on now that's got you so excited?'

'It's... The Sickness,' Norman said, waving his hands to make it sound spooky. 'Turns out, something's starting to go wrong with it after all.'

The Sickness was, as far as Blaize knew, the new virus that Norman and Siobhan had been telling her about last night.

From what she understood, the virus had been discovered in Mexico somewhere recently, where it affected animals, supposedly turning them into zombies. Apparently, its effects were so horrific that its full name was actually "The Sickness to End All Sicknesses".

Norman had cracked a joke about animals eating brains and such, until Siobhan interrupted him to say that strangely enough The Sickness didn't appear to affect the brain much at all. It seemed to make slight alterations to it, which indicated that they weren't zombies at all, but something _different_.

Needless to say, Norman still insisted the infected animals were zombies.

'What happened?' Ben asked, the mentioning of something going wrong piquing his curiosity.

'Well, as it turns out, a test animal, a chimpanzee that had the virus, escaped after the scientists tried out a test cure on it,' Norman explained. 'While they look for it, someone's bound to get bitten, and then we'll see if the disease affects humans as well,' he concluded dramatically.

Blaize gave Norman a quizzical look.

'You don't seem to be worried about the whole thing,' she said, noticing the lack of concern on Norman's face. 'If this gets out of hand, really bad stuff might happen.'

'I doubt it,' Norman assured her. 'The chances of the virus being able to turn into an uncontrollable outbreak are _astronomical_.' He checked his watch. 'Well, look at the time. We'd better pack our stuff before everyone else wakes up. By the time we're done with that, Mrs. Smith is prolly going to want us back on the bus pronto.'

Blaize nodded in agreement, and everyone, after finishing their drinks, got up and left to pack their things.


	2. Part One

A/N: "Kia Ora" is a greeting in Maori (the native language of New Zealand). The New Zealand news channels generally start with these words, if my memory's anything to go by. Enjoy :D

_Part One: Auckland City, New Zealand, 5:57 PM, 20th December, 2012_

'They're sturdy, they're safe, they're packed with enough supplies to last ten people two weeks and they're marked with red steel doors, but are these so-called test "Safehouses" the government has set up going to be enough to save us from the predicted 2012 apocalypse?'

As the bus made its journey across Auckland City back to St. Monica's College, Blaize averted her gaze from the T.V. showing the previews of the articles to the six' o' clock news a few seat rows down the bus and looked down at the writing pad on her lap, which had the words "UNKNOWN TITLE" scrawled across the top in her handwriting, and sighed.

She'd run out of ideas for a story she'd been working on. It was supposed to be a romance novel set in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and she'd been wondering what to write down next. The hero's love interest had just been bitten, and the hero and his two friends were doing everything they could to try and save her. Question was, what came next? Did they succeed in finding Zoey a cure? Or did they fail? It was all questions to ponder.

The snoring from her right gave her a refreshing distraction from her thoughts as she checked on her little brother Ben as he leaned on her shoulder, giving him a smile as he slept peacefully.

Blaize finally decided that she'd ask her mother, Stephanie, what she should do with the story after she and Blaize's father, Bill Jr., got back from Fairfield. After all, she was the expert on writing fantasy romance.

She sighed, placed the writing pad and the pencil perched on her ear back inside her dark green linen knapsack, reached inside with her fingerless black leather gloves that were currently serving no purpose other than to leave her digits out in the cold and pulled out a brown, woollen shawl. She wrapped it around the jeans and thin dark red Kathmandu jacket that emphasized her slim figure to her advantage and shivered, as the heaters inside the bus had broken half an hour ago. Although it wasn't snowing in Auckland City yet, as it had been in Hamilton, the place was almost as cold.

Norman, noticing the sound of the clips fastening as Blaize closed her knapsack, turned around in his seat in front of her and looked at her.

'Getting bored?' he asked her inquisitively, raising his eyebrows and smiling for a second.

Blaize just sighed.

'I just don't know,' she replied wearily, glancing outside the window. The bus was travelling through Queen Street – she could tell by the particular assortment of shops with their neon signs and lights on in view as the night had already crept in.

She shook her head, sighed again, and looked back at Norman. 'Y'know, you and Siob watch the news every day, and to be quite honest, it's scary, how you two never seem to get tired of it.'

Norman met the remark with a smirk.

'"_Scientia est vox",_' he simply replied. 'Knowledge is power. You never know when you're gonna need it.'

'_Sure_,' Blaize replied in a sarcastic tone. 'And how exactly _is_ watching the news as much as you do going to help with that?'

Siobhan turned around next to Norman and looked at Blaize as well.

'It keeps us up to date,' she replied, answering Blaize's question. 'Sometimes teaches us stuff we didn't know – y'know. For example, did you know that Norm here was right?'

Blaize raised an eyebrow curiously.

'Right about what?'

'The Sickness. The chimpanzee escaping, remember? Turns out, it bit a New Zealand Army captain that had been guarding the lab.'

'My God. What happened to the chimpanzee?'

'It escaped into the wild after it bit the poor fellow. Animal Control is off to track it and put it down as soon as they find it.'

'Why put the poor thing down?'

'Because,' Norman explained, 'turns out, the chimpanzee single-handedly killed all of the scientists in the lab in the same way – by ripping out their throats with its bare teeth.'

Both Blaize and Siobhan cringed at the mentioning of the gruesome deaths.

'Holy _shit_,' Blaize grimaced.

'Bloody animal zombies, I tell you,' Norman agreed, nodding.

'They're not zombies,' Siobhan corrected him. 'The Sickness just screws around with their neocortexes – that's basically their minds, Blaize - and mutates them.'

'Technically, that means The Sickness turns them into zombies, Siob,' he replied, turning to face his sister.

'Not really. Zombies don't run. These can.'

'Wait a sec,' Blaize butted in before the argument escalated to references to Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later being flung around, 'if all the scientists had their throats torn out, where did the captain get bitten?'

'Good question,' Norman said. Looking behind him at the T.V., he noticed that the previews for the news articles were about to end and start the first article, the one about The Sickness. 'It appears we'll have our answer about now.'

Turning up the volume, he made sure it was loud enough so that the three of them could easily hear what the reporters were saying.

'Kia Ora, I'm Jenny Fox, and welcome to Three News,' the reporter's voice could be heard over the speakers. 'Tonight, we have a special cover on the recently-discovered virus labelled simply as… "The Sickness".'

The reporter gulped before continuing.

'Scientists in the Medatech Laboratories near Auckland City had been conducting tests on a chimpanzee that had the virus when early this morning, at around four, the animal went missing from its cage. After attempts to find it were unsuccessful, the chimpanzee ambushed the scientists, killed them, bit one of the security guards, and escaped.'

'See? I told you,' Norman said.

'Animal Control is currently looking for the escaped chimpanzee. In other news, one of our camera crewmen, Tony Fergusson, was just granted access to the lab, and we now cross over to him live on the scene. Tony, over to you.'

The screen was then occupied from the viewpoint of a handheld camera, which revealed an empty science lab.

To Blaize and Siobhan's dismay, the walls were covered in blood.

'Thank you, Jenny - Tony Fergusson here. I'm sorry about the camera quality, but I'm the first one here on the scene, where it appears that members of the Department of Conservation are currently talking to one of the survivors, a Sergeant Thaddeus Cyrus, for information on what threat this chimpanzee could pose in terms to local wildlife, and-'

'Will you _please *cough* take_ that camera away _from *cough* here_, sir, if you can,' a hoarse, wheezy voice interrupted. The camera didn't turn around to see who was now talking, but the cameraman responded.

'Ah, Captain Nicholas Cale, one of the survivors,' Tony's surprised voice came over the camera. Obviously, Blaize noted, he didn't have much experience as a reporter. 'Blimey. Are you sure that the chimpanzee bit you? It looks more like-'

Tony was then interrupted again, this time by the unmistakable sound of vomiting.

'Nick? You all right?' he asked.

'_I'm… *cough cough* fine… *gurgle* never *cough-snarl* **better.**_'

'Are you sure?' The cameraman asked. 'You don't _look_ fine- _what the-_'

What came next was an unnatural, inhuman scream as the camera dropped suddenly and rolled across the ground for a few seconds and then stopped, with the lens facing towards a cabinet door.

The cameraman's screams could be heard over the speakers as well as a disturbing shredding sound, and then blood began to splatter on the white cabinet door in view.

Everyone who was watching was staring at the T.V. in shock. The bus driver didn't seem to notice the sounds. Blaize guessed that the reporting crew were too curious to find out what had happened to Tony to turn off the live feed.

'Tony?' the reporter's voice could be heard. 'Tony, are you all right?'

Around ten seconds later, the screaming stopped as the camera was picked up. It turned. And then the lens saw something no teenager should ever see, or anyone, for that matter.

It was the face of someone, or rather, some_thing_. It was the face of a man, but a full half of it was missing, as if something monstrous had mauled him. An ugly stream of pus was starting to seep out from his exposed and mangled cheek, and where there weren't normal human features was meaty, bloody and throbbing flesh, with the telltale signs of inhuman teeth marks on his forehead. He looked far worse than a burn victim.

You could see his eye socket, part of his left nasal tube and the inside of his mouth just by staring at the stump. And his remaining eye glowed yellow. It was no _wonder_ Tony didn't turn the camera around.

'Oh God,' Siobhan gasped, covering her mouth with both of her hands. 'So that was where he was bitten.'

It was at the mere sight of this _thing_ that everyone on the bus that was watching covered their eyes in horror and disgust with the exception of Blaize, Siobhan and Norman. But worse was to come.

'**Another _soul… *cough cough cough*…redeemed_,**' the thing said. Its eye suddenly switched its baleful gaze from the ground to the camera lens. '**This_ camera…*cough cough*… it_ still _works_…**'

'It _speaks!_' Norman exclaimed.

The horrified gasping from Jenny Fox over the speakers explained her reaction far better than mere words could.

'**You… *cough*… _fear me_,**' Captain Cale said, noticing the gasp and wiping away a small steam of pus from his mangled cheek before continuing. '**You _should_. There is only one thing that the Sickness is.** **It is the… extermination… of every living thing… it is the beauty… of** **_death._ The Sickness desires only that everything _dies_, first of all its worst enemy… _humanity_.**' He pronounced the race as if it were a species of fungus. '**Nice… and _simple_…**'

Blaize and Siobhan's jaws dropped as Norman stared into the screen in morbid fascination.

'**The Sickness is… _everything_,**' Captain Cale continued. '**By the time you watch this… the humans the Avatar of The Sickness has infected will have reached the nearest city… and start spreading The Sickness amongst your citizens!**' He snarled at the camera, revealing two inhumanly razor-sharp rows of teeth. '**Death comes for you!**'

With that, he screamed into the camera, opening his jaws freakishly wide and emitting another disturbing inhuman scream. Then, the image was reduced to static as the signal failed after a flash of sudden movement.

The visibly shaken newscaster reappeared, and swallowed nervously before continuing her report.

'Reports… from the remaining survivor state that the chimpanzee… was increasing in size…' she said, visibly desperate not to break down in front of the cameras. 'And it appears…that by the looks of things… it would've reached Auckland City by now… and it's just been confirmed… the virus… is contagious-'

Before she could continue, Norman had turned off the T.V. as everyone just sat there, dumbstruck as the bus finally slowed down and stopped in front of an alley as the ground began to shake.

'_Astronomical_, eh?' Blaize shot Norman a venomous look as he scratched his head sheepishly.

'Oh God,' Siobhan said again, panic apparent in her voice, 'what are we going to do? What are we going to-'

The loud screeching sound of what seemed like a car crash interrupted her words.

It was then Blaize, Norman and Siobhan ripped their attention to the alley their bus was in front of to just see a white car flying towards the top of the bus at a surprising speed.

'DUCK!' Norman yelled.

Despite her usual quick reflexes, Blaize was unable to duck in time as the car slammed into the roof of the bus as the screeching sound of metal filled her ears.

In that moment, confusion, shock and the sheer instinct to duck took over in a nauseating second. The force of the explosion of the car just above the bus caused Blaize's head to collide with one of the metal poles inside the bus, knocking her unconscious as fuel showered the area and ignited, and screams filled the night.

Auckland City would burn tonight.


	3. Part Two

A/N: Here's Part Two! Let me know how I'm doing with the story so far - if there's anything I can take out/put in the make the story/setting/character personalities better, how compelling it is for you guys to read on, etc. Enjoy :D

A/N: Here's also a new "system" that I either came up with or just managed to glean from other books - the "Memorable Short Memory"! :D Those of you who've seen this story before will notice them in _Italics._

_Part Two: Auckland City, New Zealand, 1:10 AM, 21st December, 2012_

It took about seven hours before Blaize regained consciousness. She was on her stomach, and her eyes now beheld neatly grooved steel. Her knapsack and shawl were gone.

Right now, everything was suspiciously silent. Blaize's eyes struggled to become used to the dark night as the smell of ashes and burnt flesh filled her nostrils, and a liquid dripped on the back of her head.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

It was that which had revived her to a dim awareness as the dripping sound continued to fill her ears.

She tried to roll onto her back, but then all of a sudden every part of her began to feel awfully sore. She wouldn't let it stop her from seeing what was going on. She tried again. After a few more attempts, she finally managed to roll onto her back. But it was then she saw something that caused her eyes to widen in shock.

The bus was upside down. The grooved steel she saw as she regained consciousness was the roof of the bus. And above her were the mangled corpses of her schoolmates entangled amongst the seats and broken windows. The liquid that was dripping on the back of her head before now continued to drip next to her. It was blood.

She was having trouble fighting the sheer sense of panic that was rising inside of her when she heard the shuffling of feet outside of the bus wreck.

Was it the others that had survived the attack?

A head popped into view by one of the windows.

It snarled at her. She realized instantly that it was one of the victims of the Sickness, a thing she reflexively labelled as a Sickened, from the name of the virus. She could tell by its creepy, milky-white blank eyes, as well as the fact that it was sporting a massive gash that crossed its face that looked far too deep for any normal human to survive.

Accurately guessing that it would only try to kill her as Captain Cale had _presumably_ killed the cameraman earlier, she quickly reached out from her position on the ruined bus for something she could use as a weapon, panic setting in as the thing started climbing in, drool dripping off its chin as it seemed to savour its next meal.

The fingers from her right hand grasped something hard and cold. She pulled it on desperately with all of her might, adrenaline giving her strength.

After a few tries, it came free, a liquid spraying all over the area as it did, that and the weight of it causing her to assume that it was a fuel pipe. The momentum forced her right arm to arc around her body to her left, which caused her makeshift weapon to strike the Sickened directly on the head just in time with the satisfying crack of bone breaking - the impact caused it to retreat back out through the window it climbed in by in the first place.

The only thing that she saw after that was that the Sickened screeched at the cloudless night sky after it was free of the ruins of the bus, most likely to attract more of its misbegotten kind.

Exhausted, Blaize lost most of the control over her right arm. As it fell onto her chest, she looked at the weapon she had miraculously acquired in the moonlight.

She then dropped it in shock and screamed as she identified it.

It wasn't a fuel pipe. It was the arm of the bus driver. She could tell by the tattoos. And it was still bleeding.

Her scream must've renewed the Sickened's vigour, because almost seconds after she screamed, its ugly head reappeared at the window, a fragment of its skull sticking out from the top of its head. It decided to make another assault, this time by going prone and crawling its way in to make the whole process easier. Blaize was beginning to hate the circumstances she was in as she reached for the arm again.

This time, however, the Sickened grabbed it before she did and tossed it aside as it continued its crawl towards her.

Blaize knew that this time, she was done for. There was nothing she could use as a weapon now.

Suddenly, it stopped just in front of her, its arms thrashing to try and grab her before being dragged backwards out the window by some unknown force. She watched what was going on from where she was as the Sickened was dumped outside. She then saw the end of a shotgun barrel shoved in its face.

She turned away and closed her eyes as she heard the sound of the discharge of shotgun pellets.

'Blaize? You okay?' a familiar voice came from outside the bus a few seconds later.

Blaize opened her eyes and looked out the bus window to find the familiar face of Siobhan Skibursky looking back at her through the same window the Sickened was dragged out from.

'Uh… I think so,' she replied, the sound of her heart beating much faster than usual filling her ears. She tried to wriggle out, but every part of her didn't want to move. 'I might need some help.'

Siobhan nodded.

'Okay. I'm coming over to pull you out. Just don't try to do anything until I get there, alright?'

Blaize coughed nervously.

'Uh… wait a minute. We're in the middle of a contagious, virus-caused apocalypse and you're just going to crawl in here, get me out on your own and without asking me whether or not I've been bitten?'

At this, Siobhan sighed.

'Do you want me to explain my reasons now and risk the _other two of us outside_ getting attacked, or get you out and tell you myself that we saw you being bitten _seven hours ago_ when you were unconscious and that the virus takes a _maximum of twenty minutes_ to turn you into a Sickened afterwards?' Siobhan asked, supplying Blaize with a sly smile to emphasize her point.

'That's more than enough of an explanation for me,' Blaize replied, managing to sport a grin despite the situation. At the very least there were other survivors. At least she was immune from The Sickness, as far as she knew. And, at the very least, Siobhan was the same, perky and humorous self she always was.

With that, Siobhan started climbing in.

'Norm and I managed to stay conscious after the car exploded above us,' she explained as she slipped her slim, prone figure inside the bus. 'We managed to avoid being detected by the Sickened that initially attacked the city by playing dead. You'd think they would've noticed us, and Norm didn't think it would be a good idea, but it worked, although we both still got bitten after. We couldn't go back and get you until we got ourselves weapons. We're immune as well, of course.'

She quickly grabbed Blaize's wrists and began to pull her out. As she was being pulled out, Blaize felt some of her strength returning to her.

'How did you know about the immunity to the Sickness?' she asked, noticing the same shotgun used to annihilate the Sickened's head strapped around Siobhan's back. 'And where did you get that shotgun?'

'Norm, Ben and I managed to get to one of the safehouses that the Auckland City Council set up,' Siobhan explained as she hauled Blaize out. 'There was a radio broadcast out saying that about one in ten people are immune to the Sickness. As for the weapons, turns out, other people who _weren't_ the Government left weapons in there for other survivors, along with lots of ammo for situations like this. It's where we're headed to now-'

'-Wait. My little brother's _alive?_' Blaize interrupted, halfway through the window, her brain catching up to her ears, and now using her legs to support herself. The corpse of the now-headless Sickened that had tried to attack her had been kicked aside, and a stinging sensation coming from her right ankle notified her of where she'd been bitten hours ago.

'Of course - funny thing is, he was still asleep when we found him about twenty meters from the ruins of the bus. The Sickened probably thought he was dead. Man, he even sleeps _like_ the dead.'

'Hey! That's _me_ you're talking about, innit?' Ben's voice came from behind Siobhan as Blaize finally managed to plant both of her feet on the cold, hard road.

She looked over Siobhan's shoulder to see him standing there in his now slightly-dirtied red t-shirt that read "Kiss Me If You Like Pyromaniacs!" in large, bold white text and plain red shorts. And then he ran up to her and hugged her.

'Sonja!' he exclaimed, hugging her tighter than she would've have liked, 'you're alive!'

'Uh… Ben? I think that's overdoing it,' Blaize squeaked, not surprised that Ben had decided to use her actual name rather than her nickname.

During the whole thing, Blaize noticed that Norman was standing behind his sister, holding a machine pistol that bore the symbol of the New Zealand Army in his hands, a dark green fern, with two black cloth bags draped over his sides, while Ben had two pistol holsters hanging from his belt.

Even though her little brother was in the middle of giving her a bear hug, Blaize couldn't help but observe her surroundings.

Her heart sank as she did so.

Queen Street had transformed. Where once there were flashy and vibrant stores, there were ruins. Where people had walked, there were corpses. Where there had been order, chaos. Light, dark, save for the nightlight of the world above and the occasional still-working pilot light illuminating the nightmarish involuntary transformation of the once-great Auckland City from below.

Car wrecks, corpses, rubble and rubbish were scattered across the street, almost like the forgotten, dejected toys of a child. But even Blaize knew that forgotten toys still had some sentimental value in their owners' hearts, and that the attack, the sheer hell that had been unleashed upon _her_ city, had hit far, far too close to home.

The moment was interrupted by the screeching sound of more Sickened from the ruins of the shops. Ben let go of Blaize, looked around for a second, and drew out the two pistols from the holsters that hung from his belt.

'Here, use this and make yourself useful,' Norman said to Blaize calmly, digging into one of his bags, producing a black metallic object and handing it to her. 'It's fully loaded.'

As she took the object in her hands, her eyes widened.

_'Sonja Fiore Ignis! Where are you?'_

_Sixteen-year-old Sonja Ignis was still staring at the object she now held in her hands when she heard the voice. She was so enthralled by the object that she didn't hear the sound of footsteps behind her._

_'Ah, there you are,' Bill Jr. Ignis' voice came from behind her._

_Sonja, her trance broken by her father's words, raised her head slightly as she realized what was going on. She was on her knees, staring at and cradling the black metallic object she knew was a gun in her hands in the middle of her father's office._

_'I've been looking for you everywhere,' her father continued, his footsteps getting closer. 'I think I found those school books you came up here to look fo-'_

_Suddenly, Bill Jr. stopped, and Sonja's mind started to race at what that meant._

Oh_, shit, she thought. _He's seen the gun.

_A short period of silence reigned. Sonja reckoned that she was in trouble. Instead, to her surprise, her father just smiled at the nervous grin she now gave him._

_'So, you found your Grandpa Bill's old M16A4 Maverick Assault Rifle, eh?' he chuckled, crouching down next to her. He ran his hand through his short blonde hair before continuing. 'Last time this baby saw action was three years ago, back in Iraq when your Grandpa Bill gave it to me as a gift.' He put a firm hand on the gun before turning his gaze towards Sonja, his weathered blue eyes looking into her red eyes intently and then smiling. 'You wanna try this baby out at the firing range?'_

_Sonja nodded._

_'Sure, Dad,' she said, giving her father an uncertain smile, although it was more to stay out of trouble rather than her desire to fire the thing. However, that opinion changed after she'd had a chance to try it out at the firing range, her face beaming with joy like a child opening presents on Boxing Day every time she'd hit a target._

Right now, her mouth was curving into such a smile, before she spotted something etched on the grip – a single word: BOHICA.

Now, Blaize didn't recognise the meaning of the word – apparently, it had something to do with bad things – but the one thing she did recognise was the style it was etched on with – it had the exact same as her grandfather's gun. The very same gun would serve three generations of a single family in a row now.

She had no idea how the gun had managed to get itself back into the hands of an Ignis other than the fact that Fate, apparently, had a very strange sense of humour.

'Holy shit,' she said in awe as the memories flooded back to her, 'where the _hell_ did you get this?'

'The safehouse I found my shotgun in,' Siobhan answered her, vigilantly looking around for any Sickened. 'Ben didn't want it and said you had some experience with it before, so we thought you would.'

She stopped talking, took aim at something moving in the darkness ahead and fired.

It was as if Siobhan had set off the starting gun for the rest of the Sickened lurking in the shadows, because soon after she fired her shot, the sounds of an approaching tide of shoes and bare feet on the cold, shattered and unforgiving road resounded across the street.

'Uh-oh,' Ben said, uncertain as he spotted the first of the Sickened erupting from the darkness around them. 'Norm? Run? Or shoot?'

Blaize spared a glance at Norman and Siobhan, and noticed that while Siobhan was shaking in anticipation, Norman wasn't looking at the horde. He was staring at one of the shop windows ahead of him, which Blaize recognized as the somewhat-untouched Kathmandu store.

'Run or shoot?' Ben asked again, more sternly this time and with an edge of panic in his voice. The Sickened were getting dangerously close now.

Norman gave him a quick glance, his trance broken, before redirecting his attention towards the incoming horde.

'What do you think, Ben?' he asked him sternly. 'Shoot!'

With that, everyone started shooting.

The incoming Sickened fell by the numbers as the survivors quickly fell into line, covering each others' backs, but even so, Blaize realized that the Sickened were not only tenacious, but they learnt quickly. As each of them fell, more filled its place, using the corpses of the fallen as cover.

They were advancing, and there was nothing the survivors could do to stop it.

As Blaize shot another round into the chest of an approaching Sickened and looked behind it after a few minutes of continuous firing, she felt a glimmer of hope. There were no more behind the rest of the horde.

She was immediately thrust back into the situation when she just noticed the Sickened she'd shot close its jaws around her left forearm. Pain instantly shot up her arm, and she rifle butted the thing on the head with her weapon, which caused it to stumble back.

She held the wound on her arm and grimaced, but her expression was immediately replaced by one of surprise when she saw the Sickened that had bitten her.

It was cupping its face with its hands and screeching at the ground, writhing in pain. As Blaize watched it, Siobhan, who noticed what had happened, immediately shot the thing with her shotgun, killing it.

But even as it lay dead, Blaize couldn't help but stare at the Sickened's corpse.

From what she saw, its mouth was leaking green-tinted blood, and it sure as hell wasn't hers.

'Well, that's the last of them,' Ben said, with a sigh of relief.

'Blaize! You alright?' Siobhan asked Blaize as she examined her wound. 'Norman, hand me some dressings, willya? Quick!'

Blaize didn't reply. She just kept staring at that particular corpse.

Norman, after handing Siobhan a roll of dressings, followed her gaze and walked towards the corpse, squatted down in front of it so that Blaize's view was obscured, and examined it.

'Holy _shit_…' he breathed. 'What the _hell_ is this?'

Ben immediately approached the corpse, and after Siobhan had bandaged Blaize, she followed.

'This… this isn't like anything I've seen before…' Norman continued. 'Blaize? I think you might wanna have a look at this.'

Upon hearing his words, she snapped out of her trance and strode over to the corpse.

What she saw wasn't pretty at all. Norman had moved the Sickened's hands, and now, she saw that its mouth was sizzling. It was as if acid had been thrown on its teeth. The stench of rotting flesh and boiled blood wafted into Blaize's nostrils, and she covered her nose with her hand.

'How the heck did this happen?' Ben asked Norman. 'This looks fresh to me.'

'Blaize got bitten by that one,' Siobhan said as she looked at the corpse.

Norman and Ben glanced up at Blaize.

'How the-' Norman started, but he was interrupted by a loud, bestial roar from further up the street.

Ripping their attention towards the sound, it was obvious that behind the masses of wrecked cars and other detritus strewn across the street, something big, and obviously inhuman, was coming straight for them as the ground started to shake from its weight. The four of them were brought out of their shock by the following sound of a car crash, similar, as Blaize noted, to the one she'd heard before she'd been knocked unconscious.

As a wrecked white car flung out of the shadows and into the moonlight towards them, Blaize instinctively leapt to her right while the others leapt to the left just seconds before the automotive projectile landed with a loud screech in the space where they were standing just mere seconds ago before sliding a few more meters down the road.

Blaize regained her footing and looked up towards the source, and her eyes widened as she saw it.

Even in the shadows, she could outline a silhouette of a Sickened about the size of a jeep approaching, a pair of glowing green eyes bobbing up and down furiously in the dark as it approached. But now, she could smell it – the combined stench of vomit, blood and other, biological, disgusting substances making their assault on her nose almost causing her to gag.

And then it erupted out of the shadows of the buildings and into the moonlight, where she could see in detail what this thing was.

It was humanoid. It appeared human, but that, it seemed, was where the similarities between what this thing was and humans ended. It travelled on two giant arms, each the size of a man, much like a gorilla. Its head, tiny in comparison to the rest of its body, was nestled in the middle of the thing's massive upper-body, and there were rotting patches across its skin, all leaking greenish blood and streams of pus.

As it charged towards Blaize, she aimed towards it and squeezed the trigger. It roared again, revealing a missing lower jaw, and brought one massive arm back to punch her.

Diving to her right, she dodged the punch, and as she landed, she realized that this thing wasn't slow. When she looked up again, she saw its massive fists were already raised up above its head, and her eyes widened as she realized that this Sickened was about to crush her.

Before it could do so, however, a hail of shells from Siobhan's shotgun blast on its back interrupted it in mid-smash, and it turned on her instead as Norman and Ben started shooting at the thing, giving Blaize time to regain her footing and start firing.

Luckily enough for her, Siobhan dodged the Sickened's overhead blow as it pulverized the ground she had been standing on seconds ago before ripping out a piece of road and flinging it at Ben and Norman, who dived out of the way just in time as it embedded itself into another wrecked car.

After taking a few swipes at Siobhan, the thing grabbed the front of a nearby wrecked car and attempted to swipe Siobhan with it, who flung herself flat on the ground to avoid it, and then it flung the vehicular weapon towards Blaize, who dived to the ground once more as the wreck passed over her head by inches before crashing into a ruined shop.

And then it charged towards Blaize again.

As it did so, she rolled on the ground to her left, just barely avoiding it, stood up and turned towards the thing to fire a few more shots only to be met by a punch to the stomach by the monster, which sent her flying across the street.

It was like she had been hit by a train or something along the lines of one. As her body crumpled to go along with the blow to avoid as much damage as possible, she maintained her grip on her assault rifle, but it was all she could do.

She landed on her back, but then the momentum caused her to flip over backwards again and onto her stomach, her weapon just within her reach. The pain in her stomach was excruciating.

'_Blaize!_' Siobhan's voice rang out.

Someone grabbed her wrists. She looked up and saw Siobhan there, pulling her up.

'Come on! You've got to get up! That thing is coming over here _right now!_' she said hurriedly.

'Siob! Quickly, your shotgun!' Norman shouted.

Siobhan quickly threw Norman her shotgun as Blaize saw through blurry vision that the giant Sickened was almost upon them. And then Norman stepped in between it and Blaize and Siobhan like a hero.

He quickly shoved the shotgun barrel in front of its face with the end of it just a meter away from it as it drew back its arm to punch him, and with one mighty blast, blew off its head.

For a second, Blaize thought that it would continue its rampage despite the fact that the only thing that remained of its head was a stump of a neck, but then it halted suddenly, collapsed to its knees and then fell just in front of Norman as Siobhan continued to help Blaize up.

'Cripes,' Ben said in awe as he looked at the headless corpse. 'That… that was _awesomeness_ on a _stick._'

Siobhan nodded in agreement as Blaize finally managed to get back onto her feet.

'Blaize, you all right?' Norman asked her, looking her over.

She couldn't reply, but instead groaned, holding her stomach as she leaned on Siobhan for support, her face scrunched up in pain. Her insides felt like they'd just gotten a beating, and at the moment, she certainly didn't feel like walking at all.

Norman finished his diagnosis and gave Blaize a smirk.

'Cheer up,' he said, giving her a pat on the back. 'It doesn't appear to be too bad. Some rest in a safehouse should fix that up.'

'But the question is, Norm,' Siobhan asked, 'where can we find one?'

'Hey!' a voice called out from one of the ruins of the shops. Blaize could see a figure in a black trench coat and gas mask waving at them from the Kathmandu store. 'You! Get in here, quick!'

Siobhan looked at Norman, and he nodded at her before the group moved towards the store as fast as they could.

Climbing up the escalator steps, they were greeted by the man in the armour, who had opened a large red steel door, covered by a large, dark green cloth, leading into the safehouse within. They stumbled into the room as the man shut the door behind them.

The safehouse was well-lit, with mattresses, sleeping bags and piles of unused clean clothes in the left back corner of the store, weapons and ammo assorted in neat piles and a radio in the front left corner, an open door that lead to the toilet in the back, where Blaize noticed a makeshift shower inside, and two fridges and a large cupboard in the right corner, with a camp burner in the middle of the room, which was currently gently simmering a pot of potato soup, the refreshing smell of which wafted into her nose.

After the man shut the door and pushed some furniture in the way, he turned and examined the teenagers behind the gas mask.

'What the blimey frak were you fullas doing out there?' he asked them sternly. 'Where did you get your weapons from, and who are you?'

'Saving our friend here,' Norman replied, nodding at Blaize. 'We got our weapons from the IMAX cinemas safehouse.'

The man snorted at the mention of the safehouse.

'Never really liked that safehouse. Sure, there's two exits, but one's through that bloody big fan that still works,' he replied before extending a gauntleted hand towards Norman. 'Sergeant Thaddeus Cyrus,' he introduced himself, 'New Zealand Army, Special Ops Division "Rough Riders". Heavy Weapons.'

'Norman Skibursky, student at St. Monica's College,' Norman introduced himself, shaking the sergeant's hand. 'Excellence-Achiever. Behind me's my sister, Siobhan, and our friends, Ben and Sonja Ignis. All students, by the way, sir.'

'You sure know how to treat the right fullas with the right level of respect, kid,' Sergeant Cyrus noted, slightly sarcastically.

Blaize raised an eyebrow as she tried to stand up straight.

'What exactly _are_ you doing here?' she asked, keeping down the pain from her stomach. 'It sure looks like you plan on staying here for a while.'

'Very observant of you,' the sergeant replied, giving her a respectful nod before removing his gas mask. 'I stationed myself here to help any survivors still trapped in the city get out. Alive.'

Siobhan gasped as she saw Sergeant Cyrus' face.

He was growing a short beard, but the multiple scars on his face explained better than words that he was no stranger to battle.

An eye patch over his left eye covered a lost eye, and a large, straight scar across his face from the bottom right cheek that crossed his eye patch probably was from a knife wound that, as Blaize had guessed, rendered his left eye useless.

The remaining one was looking at the teenagers wearily, as if he'd seen far too much of the horrors of the Sickness to fully trust them.

It wasn't those features that had made Siobhan gasp, however.

'Wait a minute, I know you! You're the guy that had been guarding the Medatech Lab with Captain Cale!' she exclaimed, remembering the sergeant's name from the news earlier.

Again, Sergeant Cyrus snorted before scratching his medium-length military-style raven black hair.

'Guilty as charged,' he replied grimly, as if his own statement was a conviction against himself. 'That bloody lab was my first failed assignment. And here I am, trying to fix up my mistake. I should've shot that bloody chimpanzee instead of letting it escape.'

He shook his head and discarded his gas mask on the ground.

'By the way, I saw what you kids did out there, taking down that Tank with better efficiency than some of the Army units I've seen,' he said, referring to the now-headless giant Sickened that had attacked them. 'Colour me impressed. And that doesn't happen often.'

He gave all of them a respectful nod before he strode over towards the bubbling pot of soup, muttering something under his breath and checking the soup before turning towards the teenagers, who hadn't moved.

'Well, make yourselves comfortable, kids,' he said. 'Soup's ready, and it's going to be a long night tonight.'

Half an hour after dinner, after having a few quick showers and getting changed into cleaner versions of the clothes they wore in the clothing pile, Siobhan helped Blaize lie down onto a dark blue mattress before lying down on another one next to hers. Norman was busy looking at the weapons Sergeant Cyrus had in the safehouse and deciding which ones to choose, and Ben was listening to a few of Sergeant Cyrus' war stories intently.

'Blaize?' Siobhan asked. 'Do you think things will go ever go back to normal?'

Blaize turned on her mattress and smiled at her.

'Yeah. Of course. "I'll bring peace back on Earth if I have to kill every one of these bastards with my own bare goddamn hands,"' she replied, quoting a character from an old game she used to play.

Siobhan just smirked at her, but then sighed.

'Well, do you think your parents are going to be fine? You know, in Fairfield?'

Blaize's red eyes looked deep into Siobhan's green ones for a few seconds before she rolled onto her back, gently pushed aside a few strands of her long, moist crimson hair, and sighed.

'I hope so. And even if there are Sickened over in America, Dad and Grandpa Bill sure know their way around guns, that's for sure.'

She was about to ask about Siobhan and Norman's parents, Timothy and Nicole Skibursky, when she remembered that they had died in a car accident years ago during a vacation to Wellington. She knew, because she and Ben were in the car as well when it happened more than two years ago, and that the four teenagers were lucky to get out mostly unscathed.

All that she and Norman had now as a relative was their uncle. 'How's your Uncle Francis, by the way?'

Siobhan took in a deep breath before answering the question.

'Doing fine, I guess. Being in a motorcycle gang means we don't see him much. He should be in Fairfield, too, if the schedule he gave us is correct.'

She sighed.

'You know, it's ironic,' she said, changing the topic. 'What's going on now, this situation – it's like your unnamed story just suddenly came to life and dumped us in place of the characters.'

Blaize just sighed in agreement. Her bag was gone now, and so was the story. It was of no matter. She'd be able to write it up again. But this time, she thought, she'd actually have a _proper_ reference when it came to describing the infected.

'It's pretty late,' Siobhan continued, looking at the clock on the wall to her right, changing the topic again. It was already two in the morning. 'I reckon we should get some sleep now.'

'Yeah,' Blaize replied.

'Goodnight,' Siobhan said.

'You too,' Blaize replied.

As Siobhan fell asleep, she fingered the silver necklace around her own neck. It was the last thing her mother had given to her before she and Blaize's father left for their visit to Fairfield three weeks ago.

_'Sonja – remember to take care of yourself when we're gone,' Stephanie Ignis told Sonja, her brown eyes and her mouth simultaneously smiling at her._

_Sonja was at the airport with her parents at the "Departures" terminal. Ben had decided to wait at the car with Siobhan and Norman, no doubt to try and plan out what he could do while Stephanie and Bill Jr. were off in Fairfield for the following month._

_'I know, Mum,' Sonja smiled at her mother as she held Sonja's cheek. _

_Stephanie Ignis just smiled, her crimson-red ponytail bobbing up for a second before she took out a shiny silver necklace from her pocket._

_'Here,' she smiled at Sonja as she gave it to her, 'I was going to give you this at Christmas, but, well, you know. Your father and I won't be back until the 28th.'_

_Sonja accepted the necklace – it was a simple cross on a shield, and despite its simplicity, it was beautiful._

_'Thanks, Mum,' she simply said. Her mother beamed back at her._

_'Don't worry about Ben's presents – we'll give him his when we get back from Fairfield. Oh, and don't let him near the chest in the attic, by the way – we both know what he does when he gets his presents too early.'_

_Stephanie was about to continue before Bill Jr. tapped his watch, reminding her that the plane was going to leave soon. Sighing, she picked up her luggage and took one last look at Sonja._

_'Oh, and one last thing before we go, Sonja,' she said. 'Watch over little Ben for us while we're gone, okay?'_

_Sonja just nodded._

_'Will do, Mum,' she assured her and smiled. 'I won't let him burn down the house like he did last year.'_

_Her mother simply smirked at her one last time before she and Sonja's father started walking. Sonja just stood there, watching as her parents disappeared down the "Departures" corridor, never to be seen again._

She smiled at the necklace and kissed it, knowing with a certain satisfaction that she was following her mother's request to the letter.

With that, she dozed off and fell asleep as outside, in the cold morning darkness, some Sickened shuffled around the ruined streets of the city as, for once in the history of Auckland City, it began to snow.


	4. Part Three

_A/N:_ I've changed the rating on this story after realizing the classification that I chose before (M) wasn't exactly the right one to choose. Well, here's Part Three. Enjoy the story, and let me know what I can do to improve on it and on the plot/character personalities/setting so far :D -Matt

_Part Three: Auckland City, New Zealand, 3:00 PM, 21st December, 2012_

_'I__s there anyone there?' someone called out, as though from a great distance._

_Blaize had no idea of what was going on. She was in the middle of a big room, which had small windows at the top of it, which revealed a darkened Auckland City, complete with the Skytower in ruins. Bright lights that hung from the ceiling illuminated a few basketball hoops attached to the walls as well as a red steel door ominously._

_'Is there anyone there?' the voice called out again._

_Blaize looked around her, and saw a girl huddled in a corner, shivering, and all alone._

_She had the brown complexion of a half-Maori half-European, with long black hair tied up in a ponytail. She was wearing a dark blue jacket and jeans, and looked to be about eighteen, Blaize's age, and was looking cautiously around her, almost as if she expected some Sickened to enter the room._

_'I'm here,' Blaize called out before walking towards the girl._

_As soon as the girl heard her, she raised her head and looked at Blaize through large, enveloping eyes._

_Then, Blaize realized that the girl's eyes were different, like her own. They were an unearthly shade of dark cobalt. In a good deal of respects, this girl seemed just like her, but only the opposite colours. The scent of lavender emanated from the girl like a perfume._

_'Who… who are you?' the girl asked, probably still wondering inside whether to trust Blaize or not._

_'I'm Sonja,' Blaize replied. 'Sonja Ignis. Call me Blaize.'_

_The girl seemed to calm down a little as Blaize squatted down next to her._

_'What's your name?' Blaize asked, smiling to show she was harmless._

_The girl hesitated for a few seconds._

_'Tiff… Tiffany…' she managed, calming down some more. 'Tiffany Glaices.' _

_Blaize nodded._

_'You need some help getting out of here?' she asked her._

_Tiffany simply nodded before raising her eyebrows uncertainly and speaking._

_'It's not me that needs the help,' she said, giving her a speculative look. 'It's _you._'_

_Tiffany's last word rang out across the room like church bells, and Blaize was brought back into consciousness._

As her eyes flickered open, she realized that she was underwater. It was icy cold, and something long and slimy had wrapped itself around her stomach.

It was then, as she struggled for air, she remembered.

The survivors had left Sergeant Cyrus' safehouse at about midday after he'd received his orders from the radio inside his room. His superior, a Captain Gregory Hales, had told him while they were sleeping to tell the teenagers to make their way over to the small town of Mission Bay, reach the safehouse there and wait for further orders from the radio on the Army channel.

They had trekked across the shoreline during the day along the roads, but not without resistance.

There were plenty of Sickened, and a new variety that exhibited special traits the other Sickened didn't, of which she was the victim of currently.

She twisted and turned around in the thing's grip to swim back up to the surface to breathe, but noticed that the thing that was wrapped around her stomach was, in fact, a Sickened's long tongue, and that it was pulling her deeper underwater towards it as its glowing green eyes seemed to narrow with malicious glee at the prospect of new prey.

Then, she heard a loud shot from above the water, and the Sickened with the long tongue's head exploded into a cloud of greenish-blood underwater as she felt its grip weakening on her. But it was already too late.

Everything was starting to go dark as she realized that she'd lost too much air. She wouldn't be able to swim back up to the surface by herself. All that she could do now was hang suspended in the water… and drown.

She heard a splash from above the water, and then strong hands grasped her shoulders and placed her in its arms. Blaize, before the darkness enveloped her sight, saw that it was Norman.

The next thing she could remember was that she was on the ground on her back, and she immediately coughed up water almost the instant after a large pressure had been placed on her chest. She coughed some more as the darkness receded, and she lay back down, gasping for air.

'Holy shit, Blaize, you're a bloody Sickened magnet!' Norman's voice exclaimed.

She blinked as she saw Norman, Siobhan and Ben standing over her before swallowing, taking in another gulp of cold air, and sitting back up again. Her head was throbbing, but she managed to sport a smirk before coughing again.

She noticed the scoped hunting rifle on Norman's back, and realized that it must've been him who'd shot the Sickened and saved her.

'Thanks,' she said to Norman, picking herself up. The ground underneath her was a mixture of snow and grass, and it was almost as cold as the water.

Siobhan handed Blaize her assault rifle as Ben toted the new mini-flamethrower he'd picked up from Sergeant Cyrus cautiously, looking out for any Sickened. It was almost as long as his shin and light enough that he was able to carry a spare one attached to the napalm tank on his back. It wasn't surprising that he'd gone for it the moment he realized there were flamethrowers available.

'You dropped this,' Siobhan said, with a smile.

They were currently over a bridge that closed off a tidal basin along the shoreline, and now were at the middle of an intersection, with a large cliff looming over the bridge and the road that led underneath it. A thick white fog obscured everything else as the sun struggled to shine through.

As soon as Blaize was able to walk, the group restarted their journey, following the road along the cliff line.

Hours later, after an almost insane amount of fighting, the survivors managed to find the Mission Bay safehouse, which was nestled snugly between the cinemas and Movenpick, the ice cream parlour, inside a Belgian restaurant.

Despite their exhaustion, Ben and Norman pushed some heavy furniture in the way of the red steel door as Blaize and Siobhan consulted the radio on the bar. The clock on the wall announced silently that it was six in the evening, despite the midday appearance outside.

After twiddling with it for a few seconds, the radio sparked to life on the Army Emergency channel as Ben and Norman finished their task and walked over to the radio to listen in.

'Hello?' Norman asked over the radio uncertainly.

A few seconds passed as some static crackled.

'Who is this?' a voice came over the speakers.

'This is Norman Skibursky. Sergeant Cyrus sent us here to await further orders from a… Captain Greg?'

'Oh. Wait a second, then. I'll go get him. He's expecting you.'

Twenty more seconds passed.

'This is Captain Gregory Hales of the New Zealand Army, Rough Riders Division,' a new voice came over the speakers. It was more confident than the last, and spoke of inner calm and total self-control. 'I see Sergeant Cyrus' faith in you kids was well-placed.'

Norman coughed before continuing.

'I see. Well, he told us that we were supposed to await our next orders here, right?'

'To the point. I like that. Either way, Norman, I'm afraid you're going to have to stay where you are at the moment. Our helicopters can't pick you up at Mission Bay, but they can pick you up on the library roof over in the nearby town of St. Heliers, and that'll be cutting it close enough as it is, as it's the only roof that has tree cover against Grabbers and a newly-built landing pad.'

'I sense a "but" coming,' Ben said.

'You are correct,' Captain Greg replied. 'At the moment, our helicopters are currently picking up other survivors and supplies from different areas. The only time I can get a helicopter over to St. Heliers is at around midnight.'

'Midnight?' Norman asked.

'Yes. I'll radio you again thirty minutes prior to the pickup time. There should be pipe bombs in the safehouse's air vents, enough materials to make a few Molotov cocktails, and, from what I've heard from other survivors that have passed through the Mission Bay safehouse, a working freezer with a few tubs of ice cream. And if that's not enough, kids, it'll be me and my squad that personally evacuates you out of this hellhole, so don't complain, because you've got it pretty good at the moment.'

Norman nodded, Blaize and Siobhan smiled at Captain Greg's use of humour, and Ben's face lit up at the prospect of free ice cream.

'Got it, sir. We'll be here when you radio us,' Norman said.

'Good. Don't be late, 'cause I won't. Captain Greg out.'

'Well, helluva Christmas this is,' Ben said with a smile. 'At least we get to kick hairy arse _and_ get free ice cream, too.'

At this, Blaize, Siobhan and Norman laughed.

About five hours later, after they had prepared everything they could, Blaize, Siobhan and Norman were enjoying bowls of ice cream around a table on the second floor of the safehouse while Ben had gone off for thirds when Blaize told Siobhan and Norman about her "encounter" with Tiffany Glaices while she was being drowned.

'So you think that she's important?' Siobhan asked her.

'Wait. Have you even _met her_ before?' Norman added.

'I don't know, and no, I haven't,' Blaize replied, shaking her head before taking another small spoonful of vanilla ice cream before continuing. 'I mean, Tiffany… she was…' She paused for a second to try and find the correct word. 'She was, well… different.'

'Like you,' Siobhan supplied helpfully, brushing aside a few strands of her long, now-slightly dirtied brown hair, tilting her head towards Blaize and smiling before digging out a portion of her cookies and cream ice cream. 'You know, the whole eye colour thing. You said she's got eyes a shade of blue that doesn't occur naturally, right?'

Blaize nodded.

'Cobalt. Dark, deep cobalt blue. The only time I've seen something like that is in cheesy vampire movies.'

'Well, perhaps Tiffany could be linked to you in some particular way, seeing how you've got red eyes, and _that_ doesn't usually occur naturally too,' Norman suggested, scratching his head before lying back in his chair and relaxing, watching the small pile of chocolate ice cream in the middle of his bowl slowly melt. 'It's a possibility. Perhaps she's got blood that's acidic to Sickened as well?'

'It could be,' Siobhan agreed, shifting the conversation away from Blaize's seemingly acidic blood that affected only Sickened. 'Maybe… maybe the both of you might be linked in a particular way… perhaps she could be related to you, in some way?'

'Related? How?' Blaize asked. 'Sure, I'm half-American and half-British, and sure, she looked half-American, but from what I saw, she's half-Maori, and I'm pretty sure there isn't anyone Maori in my family tree…'

She trailed off as the topic lost its interest and a few quiet seconds passed before they heard Ben fumble around with the freezer downstairs.

'Ah. I've always found it ironic with Ben,' Blaize smirked, changing the topic.

'What's ironic?' Norman asked, scratching his head again.

'Ben. He's a pyromaniac, sure, but I've always found it strange that although he's addicted to fire and the like, his _other_ addiction is to hokey pokey ice cream.'

Siobhan had some trouble trying to stifle a short giggle.

'Really?'

Blaize smiled, as downstairs, Ben let loose a cry of "Aha!", signalling his discovery of more Hokey Pokey.

'Yeah. It's the only thing he likes apart from setting stuff on fire. Hm. Now that I think about it, why _did_ he decide to carry a second flamer on his back, anyway? It's not necessary, is it?'

Norman nodded.

'It's not. He said it's there just in case the first one malfunctions,' he explained.

'Well, if his flamer _does_ malfunction, it's probably not going to leave much of him left,' Siobhan pointed out. 'Seems like he's an optimist.'

At that, the three of them laughed.

'Ah well. So, what's life like, having such a… colourful… little brother, anyways?' Siobhan asked Blaize. 'I mean, there's bound to be more to him than we've seen, that's for sure.'

Blaize nodded.

'Not too bad,' she replied. 'Sure, he gets a little bit annoying at times, but he's all good.'

'I see,' Norman said. 'So, with both of your birthdays coming up in about three month's time, you reckon this'll all be done and over with?'

Siobhan nodded in agreement.

'Yeah. I mean, sure, the both of you were born on the same day, so that hopefully means that everything will be tidied up and contained and the like,' she added.

'Hopefully,' Blaize replied. 'And hopefully, Mum and Dad will be fine in Fairfield. Flights back to Auckland are probably not going to happen for weeks. It's sad, though.'

'What is?' Norman asked.

'That all of this happens a few days before Christmas. I mean, any other time, perhaps, but-'

Blaize was interrupted by a knocking on the wall behind her, so she turned around and saw Ben standing there looking at the three of them with a few telltale smears of hokey pokey ice cream around his mouth.

'Captain Greg's called. It's time to go,' he said before looking around the room. 'Boy, I'll miss this place.'

Siobhan smiled at him, although Blaize couldn't tell if it was because she was trying to emphasize with Ben or because she thought he looked funny with the mess on his face.

'You could always come back here when everything's fixed up,' she said as she stood up and pushed her chair in. 'It'll probably still be here. The ice cream shop, y'know.'

Ben smiled back at her as Norman and Blaize pushed in their chairs.

'Yeah, but the ice cream won't be free anymore, innit?' he pointed out, wiping the smears off his face absent-mindedly with his sleeve.

'Nope,' Blaize said, shaking her head at her little brother's "table manners". 'Well, let's grab our stuff and go. It's time we got ourselves to safety.'

After Ben and Norman grabbed a few pipe bombs and freshly-made Molotov cocktails, the group left.

As Blaize closed the red steel door behind her, she looked around the moonlight-illuminated visage of Mission Bay.

'Wait, what's that?' Blaize asked Ben after she closed the door, spotting a small bundle of wires and metal in one of his pockets.

Ben just shrugged.

'It's the fire alarm and the remote that activates it for fire drills,' he replied, patting it gingerly. 'I've got a feeling it'll come in handy.'

Blaize just shook her head and looked around again.

There was something wrong with this scene. She could tell everyone else felt the same, but they continued anyway.

There were no Sickened. When they came out of Sergeant Cyrus' safehouse back in Auckland City, there were a few that were near the door and some on top of buildings. Here, there were none to be seen.

Actually, with that in mind, it was as if there was _nothing_ living in sight at _all_.

The advance to St. Heliers was completely uneventful. Blaize checked her watch as they arrived. Five minutes before the helicopter got there. _Plenty_ of time.

They were now moving across the large lawn that was the park, which had trees along the road to the left, with the beach within sight, as the road was too broken up to traverse, and going on the beach had the risk of "Grabber" Sickened pulling them into the icy-cold water. The assortment of houses on her right loomed over them, with broken windows and the lights of abandoned cars illuminating parts of houses, all of which cast an ominous glow as the moon was slowly being suffocated by dark clouds.

It was then they heard a familiar inhuman scream.

'**The time has come, brothers and sisters! _KILL THEM!_**'

Norman turned to look behind them to see a horde of Sickened after them. But before he could turn around to run, a dark figure landed in front of him suddenly and threw a punch to his face that seemed to hit so hard that it caused him to spin around to face the group.

In one swift movement, the figure stopped Norman spinning as soon as he was facing Blaize, Siobhan and Ben, and then, after baring its mouth, the thing sunk its teeth into a large portion of Norm's left shoulder and ripped it out before kicking him back towards the group. Blaize could just notice the yellow glowing eye of the thing for a second before it leapt and made its escape, covered by the oncoming horde of Sickened.

'Norm!' Ben shouted.

Somehow, despite a large chunk of his shoulder missing, Norman managed to stand up and hold his weapon properly and act as if the massive wound wasn't there.

'_IT'S A TRAP!_' he yelled with a slight wheeze. 'Don't _worry *cough*about_ me! I'm _fine!_' With that, the group started running across the lawn as fast as they could, weapon-mounted flashlights bouncing up and down in the chaos.

Blaize looked behind again. She was in front of everyone, but she could see that Ben had stopped but was facing the oncoming horde. Even at a full sprint, the common Sickened would catch up with the survivors within the minute.

'Go! I'll buy you some time!' he shouted to the group as he pointed his mini-flamer towards the Sickened while making a slow backwards walking retreat, letting the fury of the flames loose upon the Sickened.

The shrieks of the burning things filled the night as Blaize stopped, aimed and let loose with her rifle, helping her brother as Norman and Siobhan stopped where she was and started opening covering fire upon the Sickened that were out of Ben's mini-flamer range.

'Want some?! GET SOME!' Blaize heard her brother shout as he continued his fiery retreat.

As Blaize kept aiming for the heads, she caught sight of a crouched, hooded figure on top of one of the houses, its half-concealed glowing green eyes looking hungrily at…

'Ben! To your left!' she yelled and brought her weapon upon the thing, but by the time her warning hit her brother's ears, it was too late.

The hooded figure leapt off the house and tackled the unsuspecting Ben to the ground, screaming as it did so.

As he fell over, the Sickened pressed their attack more as Blaize watched the flames from his flamer going out. The thing then started to attack Ben, who started using his arms to try and pull himself away from it.

Blaize immediately ran towards her brother, caring not for her own safety, and started to fire rounds into the thing that continued to assault her brother with Norman throwing the Molotov cocktails that he had made in the way of the Sickened that were now getting dangerously close to Ben, so they'd have time to get away as the flames warded them off.

The thing then opened its jaws wide open, and in one swift move, cleanly bit off Ben's left leg.

Ben screamed in agony as it did so, and the thing would've moved on to bite his head off were it not for Blaize and her assault rifle finally blasting the thing's head off first.

She then started to drag Ben away by his chest, her brother's flamer scraping along the ground before he grabbed it, and then started to torch the bleeding stump that used to be his leg, which was severed just below the knee, in an attempt to cauterize the wound.

'Don't do that!' Blaize yelled at her younger brother, 'you're going to-'

'I'm stopping the bleeding!' he yelled back. 'Drop me! Go, save yourselves!'

Blaize stopped as soon as she reached the others as Norman, despite his massive wound, quickly examined the damage.

'Shit!' he swore, coughing as Ben groaned, his sixteen-year old features scrunching up in pain as he finished torching the last of the bleeding veins as Norm continued his instant diagnosis, 'I don't think he's _gonna *cough* make_ it!'

Blaize quickly gave him a surprised stare.

'Shut up, Norm!' she cried out, to the surprise of herself and everyone else, tears beginning to form at the edges of her eyes as she put her hands over her ears. 'Shut up shut up _shut up!_ He's going to make it! I know it! Don't think I'm going to leave him behind to be-'

'Sonja!' Ben interrupted, in a pained tone as he ripped off a large piece of his shirt and started to painfully affix his spare mini-flamer to the half-cauterized stump of his leg. 'Leave me! I'm done for, and I'll… I'll only slow you down! You _have_ to get to the _chopper_-'

'No!' she pleaded, turning on him, 'I'm not going to leave you! Never-'

'_SONJA!_ Look at me! I don't care… about what's going to happen to me, but what's going to happen to _you_ if you stay here! You're going to… miss the helicopter! Now get out of here! I'll buy you some time!' Ben pleaded, grimacing in agony between words.

It was then Norman and Siobhan started to retreat, leaving Blaize and her brother alone.

'But… but… how are you going to stop them?' Blaize asked, her voice being lowered down to a saddened whisper.

'Don't worry. I've got a little surprise for these bastards,' Ben replied, taking off his flamer tank and strapping all of the pipe bombs he'd taken from the Mission Bay safehouse to it with a spare bit of bandage from his first aid kit. 'And if I make it out of this alive… I'll try to radio you. Now go! Go, god damnit, _GO_! Before it's too late for you to get away!'

Blaize stared at her brother for a second before nodding, hugging him one last time and then running back to join in the retreat with the rest of the group, tears streaming down her face.

Ben wired his contraption to the fire alarm that he had taken from the Mission Bay Safehouse and quickly bound it to make his own makeshift bomb. It was a simple process, really. The rat grenade he'd made earlier on in the year, he reckoned, was harder to make than this.

He knew the zombies were attracted to loud sounds and bright visual stimuli – he learned that early on after Siobhan had accidentally triggered a car alarm last night. That was what the safehouse alarm would be for. Inside, he was grateful he'd taken it with him.

'Just say no to _this_, you sick bastards,' he smiled to himself smugly.

Blaize and the others continued their retreat as they took the path of the road that split off into two other directions; one of them in front of them that went onward that would take them to more residential streets, and the one to the right, where the library could be seen at the end of that road, with ruined shop signs advertising shops such as Baker's Delight and the post office could just barely be read.

They were just out of sight of the lawn, and Norman led the way. The helicopter could be heard in the distance as it landed on the roof of the library just ahead.

'SHIT! Norm, what the hell happened to you?' Siobhan asked, staring at Norman's shoulder wound.

Blaize then realized that Norman's sister didn't see what had happened earlier.

'_It's*cough* the_ virus…' he said, coughing and wheezing, 'it's as _I *cough*noticed_… it's… changing…'

It was then he suddenly fell to one knee unexpectedly, his features scrunching up with pain as his hands clenched. Blaize and Siobhan rushed up to comfort him through what seemed like excruciating pain as he began to screech like a Sickened.

'Norm, it's gonna be okay…' Siobhan soothed, tears already streaking down her face.

'_It's… *cough*… not_,' Norm wheezed, '_I'm… *cough cough* becoming_ one of _them_…'

'**Hm,**' a familiar voice came from the rooftops of the ruined buildings. '**Welcome… to our ranks, brother…**'

It was then that the thing leapt off the building and landed in front of the three of them as Blaize recognized the half-mauled face and the yellow glowing eye. It was Captain Cale from the news two days ago that had bitten Norm. He turned towards Siobhan and Blaize.

'**Thinking… of escaping, children?**' he said. '**I… think… _not_. The Avatar of the Sickness has placed a death sentence on all of you… especially _you._**' He raised a bony and rotting finger towards Blaize.

'You've… _got…. *cough*… to_ get _to… *cough cough*… get_ to the helicopter…' Norman wheezed. He then managed to pick himself up, although visibly in a lot of pain.

'_Blaize… *cough* Siob_… you gotta get away… _from… *cough-snarl*…_ **_me._**'

Captain Cale seemed to smile with what was left of his mouth at the situation.

'**Face it,**' he said, '**no one can escape… from the Sickness… from _tranquillity_. You, brother, will have the honours have helping us give others… tranquillity…**'

'**_I…*cough cough cough* can_… _control_… it_…_**' Norman gasped, his voice becoming like that of Captain Cale as his eyes started to glow yellow. '**_You… *cough cough* may_ have… killed… _me… *cough*… but_ that won't mean I won't kill you first for what you've _done!_**'

That said, Norman screamed an inhuman scream and leapt at Captain Cale as Blaize dragged Siobhan away from the scene and towards the helicopter.

Blaize looked behind her one last time.

Norman now had Captain Cale in a headlock, of which the latter was struggling to free himself and spluttering surprised gibberish at him as Norman noticed Blaize was looking back at him.

'**_Run, Blaize, RUN!_**' Norman screamed at her with the voice of an emotional beast given the power to speak before Captain Cale managed to free himself and fling Norman into one of the walls of the broken-down stores before starting to advance towards the roof of the library, but then Norman rebounded off the wall and leapt back at Captain Cale, tackling him to the ground, trying to make him submit.

When Blaize turned back towards what was in front of her, she saw a soldier in the black trench coat-uniform of the Rough Riders in front of the library windows. They had lowered down a rope ladder for her and Siobhan to climb up on as the helicopter could just barely be seen behind the cover of the trees in front of the library.

They quickly started scaling it, with Siobhan going up first, and when the soldier started climbing up the ladder as soon as Blaize reached the top of the roof, the windows of the library shattered as Sickened librarians leapt out and tackled the soldier to the ground, ripping into his flesh, his screams of agony unheeded as the rope ladder was cut loose.

Blaize quickly spared a glance over at where Captain Cale and Norman were to just see Norman get a final grip on Captain Cale's head and in one move, rip it clean off before turning away to see another soldier standing in front of her, who wore a black trench coat over a Kevlar breastplate.

'Where's Norman Skibursky?' he quickly asked her. She recognized the confident voice of Captain Greg. 'I thought there were four of you!'

'My brother is on the field, probably dead, and as for Norman… he's down there…' she said, pointing a finger at the thing that used to be Siobhan's brother as her voice trailed off before Norman leapt away and out of sight.

'Get in, _now!_' Captain Greg ordered as the other soldiers started to embark upon the flying transport before Blaize climbed in and collapsed onto the seat next to the window as the helicopter took off, looking at the park as it circled around the beach-side of the lawn.

She couldn't see Ben anywhere, but she noticed that the Molotov cocktail fires had died out, and that there was a metallic package with the fire alarm Ben had taken from the Mission Bay Safehouse blaring, attracting the Sickened to it, as well as what seemed to be an armoured van driving away from the scene frantically.

And then, when a fair number of them had gathered around the thing, it blew up in a spectacular explosion of pyrotechnics like a backdraft. Her pyromaniac brother had managed to cause an explosion that shook even the helicopter.

But that was it. After the explosion ended, Blaize saw no one else.

Ben was most likely dead, killed either by the Sickened or by his own explosion, or, possibly, saved by the people in the armoured van, and now Siobhan's brother had turned into one of _them_. The only two people that could be considered close to the both of them were most likely dead, one of them suffering a fate worse than death.

A tear streaked down her cheeks as she realized what this meant as she comforted Siobhan, who had burst into tears and was sobbing, wishing that what had just happened was all just a bad dream that would just go away.

They were alone in this godless world.


	5. Part Four

A/N: This chapter's going to be a good deal longer than the others. Read on and you'll find out why :D Again, please, give me some good criticism and the likes. -Matt

_Part Four: Ash Base, Rangitoto Island, New Zealand, 12:28 AM, 22nd December, 28 Minutes Later_

It was a calm, early morning when Blaize angrily walked out from a door and onto a large, wooden balcony facing a beach and into the exposure of the early morning moonlight.

It had been almost half an hour since she and Siobhan had been rescued from St. Heliers by Captain Greg and his team of "Rough Riders" and brought to their headquarters on Rangitoto Island, Ash Base, but already she was starting to blame herself for what had happened.

She knew that she could've prevented leaving Ben behind if she'd shot the leaping Sickened that had bitten his leg off as soon as she saw it.

She sighed.

'I've failed you, Ben,' she said to no one in particular, 'I've failed both you and Norman.'

She put both of her elbows on the wide wooden railing and then buried her face in both of her palms, tears streaking down her face and landing on the unforgiving wood. She'd failed the both of them.

Not only that, but now, she had more and more unanswered questions. Why was it that the Avatar of the Sickness wanted her dead, out of everyone? Was it because of her acidic blood? Besides that, who exactly _was_ Tiffany Glaices?

'Blaize? You okay?'

Blaize rubbed her eyes and turned around, although she didn't need to see that it was Siobhan that was talking to her.

Siobhan was now wearing a brown leather vest with a black t-shirt and khaki pants and military boots as well as glasses that went along well with her new look instead of her contacts, and was looking at her empathetically.

She shook her head and sank down onto the floor.

'I… I just never knew life would be like this without Ben,' she sniffed, taking in a shaky breath. 'I mean, sure, he was a bit of a nuisance before, but now? Now I realize how much I miss having to watch over him.'

Siobhan nodded and sat down next to her, letting Blaize's head lean on her shoulder.

'It's like that saying "You never know what you've got until it's gone", isn't it?' she said, looking at Blaize and giving her an understanding smile.

Blaize simply nodded.

Siobhan sighed.

'I know how you feel,' she said bluntly. 'I looked up to Norman for guidance. And now, he's gone, too.'

She was about to continue when the door opened, and a soldier came out.

'Sonja? Siobhan? Captain Greg wants to see the both of you up at the Radio Room,' he said.

Siobhan looked up and raised an eyebrow at him.

'See us about what?'

'We've just got a signal,' the man said, looking at Blaize. 'It's from people who have your brother with them, apparently.'

Blaize looked at the soldier for a second, then at Siobhan.

'You'd better hurry. It looks like he could be in trouble real soon,' the soldier added.

Both girls immediately picked themselves up and sprinted past the soldier and through the door.

It took them a few minutes to reach the Radio Room, which was situated on the top of Rangitoto Island. It was a simple, large room with a makeshift satellite receiving signals on top of it with steel tables arranged neatly along the sides of the room, with communications equipment on each table.

The place was empty apart from a group of soldiers huddled around one of the tables, Captain Greg amongst them. Noticing Blaize as she entered the room, he beckoned her over.

'It's Ben,' he explained as a mixture of static and shouting made their way out of the radio. 'It seems he's got company with him.'

Blaize nodded, and immediately grabbed the radio microphone.

'Ben? Is that you?' she asked cautiously.

More shouting could be heard.

'Damnit, Ashley, will you keep this van straight?' someone's voice came over the radio. 'I can't finish the nano-joining procedure if it keeps swerving!'

'Does it look like I can? Hell, _you_ try driving this thing with a bloody Tank trying to punch its way in on this bloody motorway, Doc!' a woman's voice yelled back.

'Stow it, both o' you! The radio's on!' someone else's voice came in. Seconds passed as the screeching of tyres and the sounds of something pounding on metal came over the speakers, as well as the inhuman roar of a Tank. 'Daft _bugger!_ You say I look like a farmer? You want to know where's my farm? _HERE'S_ my motherhuggin' farm!'

Blaize raised an eyebrow at Siobhan as shotgun blasts rang across the radio.

'Holy crap, nice shot, Mike!' the woman's voice said.

The person identified as Mike then spoke up as the sounds of the fight died down.

'I'm a _LEAD FARMER, motherhugger!_' his voice boomed out over the speakers in triumph before he coughed. 'Ahem. Sorry about that. Just had us a tad bit of a problem with a Tank, as you might've noticed. Who's this now?'

Blaize coughed before speaking into the microphone again.

'I'm Sonja Ignis, Ben Ignis' sister,' she said.

'Ah. Well, Ben's currently getting his leg fixed up by Dr. Livingston at the moment,' Mike said. 'I'm Mike Calhoun, head engineer of the Liberators, by the way.' He stopped speaking for a few seconds. 'Oh. Ben wants to talk to ya. I'll pass the mic over to him.'

The sounds of the microphone exchanging hands could be heard.

'S…S-Sonja?' Ben's pained voice came over the speakers.

'It's me,' Blaize replied, her voice almost shaking with relief. 'You doing okay?'

'Y-Yeah. D-Doc Livingston here wasn't able to rea-a…attach my leg, so he's attaching a… new one using s-some nano-cells he had, and-'

The sound of metal screeching could be heard as Mike cursed over the microphone.

'Looks like that bloody Tank's not done yet! Ash! Where are we?'

'Rainbow's End is just up ahead, Mike!' the woman identified as Ashley called back. 'Where _is_ that thing, anyways?'

The screech of another Sickened could be heard, as well as some static and more metal screeching.

'Okay, Ash Base- *bzzzzzzzt* -nearing Rainbow's End, the theme park in Manurewa- *bzzzzzzzzzzzzt* We'll be setting up shop there if we can make it. What the? Oh, _crap_- *bzzzzzzzzzt* Wait a minute, that thing's not a _Tank-_'

.

All the noise on the other radio was now completely covered by static as Captain Greg looked at both Blaize and Siobhan.

'Well, looks like we've got ourselves a mission here,' he said. 'The Rough Riders know the Liberators well, as we've used their expertise for some of our other headquarters. Although they're a small company of three, they're experts on repairs and the building and programming of nano-sentry guns, which Ash Base could use. Plus, Ben's with them. We have to evac them before they're added to the victims list of the Sickness.'

Blaize nodded.

'So, how are we going to do this?'

Captain Greg looked at both Blaize and Siobhan.

'You two don't mind going after Ben and the Liberators, do you?' he asked them. 'We don't have much to spare in terms of manpower.'

Blaize looked at Siobhan for a second, and then nodded.

'Sure,' she said. 'We could use some coffee, though.'

'And one other thing,' Siobhan added.

Captain Greg raised an eyebrow at her.

'What?'

'I want one of those trench coats of yours, that's what,' she said, with a grin.

An hour later, Blaize and Siobhan were flying towards Rainbow's End on one of the Rough Riders' black helicopters, with Captain Greg piloting the vehicle. The teenagers were sitting on one side of it while Private Daniel Harks, one of Captain Greg's subordinates, was sitting on the other and looking at a picture.

'Y'know, when I first told my wife Jenny that I'd be going off to evac people from an abandoned theme park, she laughed,' Private Harks piped up, scratching his short-cut military-style brown hair. 'She'd be here with us if she wasn't pregnant with our son at the moment.'

Blaize gave him a smile.

'What's she like?' she asked him, starting a conversation to calm both her nerves and Siobhan's in the face of the upcoming mission.

'Smart. Sweet. Everything a man could hope for,' he replied, smiling at the picture before passing it to her. 'That's her.'

'Well, she's definitely pretty,' Siobhan noted, looking at the picture behind her contacts, as she'd decided to leave her glasses back at Ash Base. 'What are you going to call the baby?'

'Shaun. You know that movie, Shaun of the Dead, right? She reckoned that it'd fit well, given what's going on at the moment.'

Blaize gave him another smile before handing the picture back to him.

'It's going to be creepy, rescuing people from Rainbow's End,' he said, changing the topic, placing the picture gingerly into one of the pockets in his trench coat.

'How so?' Siobhan asked him.

'Well, as countless episodes of Scooby-Doo have taught us, abandoned theme parks are one of the last places you wanna be at times like this, no?'

Both girls nodded in agreement as the helicopter began its decent.

'I think this is the vehicle the Liberators were using when they radioed us,' Captain Greg called from the cockpit. 'Blaize, do you recognise it?'

Both Blaize and Siobhan poked their heads out of the helicopter, and their hearts sank. There, on the road, was the wreckage of the Liberators' armoured van, turned over onto its side with a large, gaping hole on its top.

'Oh, God, no…' Blaize gasped, hoping that Ben was safe. 'That's the van.'

'Roger that. Private Harks, I want you to investigate,' Captain Greg called from the cockpit, throwing Private Harks a roll of black rope. 'Get down there, and radio us if you've found anything of importance. I'll drop Sonja and Siobhan off at Rainbow's End to search for the Liberators, if they made it.'

Private Harks nodded, and attached the rope to the helicopter. He gave the three of them one last look.

'Good luck, guys,' he said, giving Captain Greg a salute before rappelling down, landing next to the ruined van as the helicopter regained altitude.

A few quiet minutes later, the radio inside the helicopter sparked to life.

'Well, looks like we've got ourselves a mess here,' Private Harks' voice came through. 'We've got good news and bad news. I'll start with the good news, Captain. Ben and the Liberators seem to have made it out alive – there's no corpses around here, or much in terms of bloodstains.'

Blaize sighed with relief.

'And what's the bad news?' Captain Greg asked.

'Well, there's no working vehicles here either. Looks like I'm gonna have to walk, sir.'

At that, Captain Greg chuckled.

'What's so wrong with a bit of exercise, Dan? Haul your hairy arse over to Rainbows End. I ain't picking you up. Let us know if you find anything else.'

Private Harks' laughter could be heard on the other end of the radio.

'Will do, sir. Harks out.'

Captain Greg turned around in his seat and looked at both girls.

'Well, looks like we're here,' he said.

Both girls looked out the windows earnestly. Rainbow's End used to be a great theme park. Everything had changed since the last time that Blaize and Ben were here with their parents' years ago. New rows of stalls had been set up, the layout of the place had been changed almost completely, and more.

But it seemed that when the apocalypse came, everything took a direct dive. Mostly everything was in ruins.

The helicopter door slid open as Blaize and Siobhan hopped out into the cloudless night, Captain Greg taking a good look at them for a few seconds and handing a radio over to Siobhan, who placed it securely in her pocket.

'I'll stay airborne until you locate Ben and the Liberators. Private Harks should be coming in through the entrance on the other side of Rainbow's End. I put locators on your weapons, so just radio us when you've found Ben and the Liberators,' he said before closing the door as the helicopter lifted off.

Siobhan quickly pumped her shotgun, examining the surrounding area. Blaize smiled at her, as her new Rough Riders' trench coat seemed to fit in well with the rest of her looks, and, as Blaize admitted to herself, now looked pretty attractive.

Blaize was wearing the same jeans and red jacket that she had worn before the St. Heliers Incident, as she reckoned that Ben would recognize it from a distance, as if her long crimson-red hair and red eyes weren't enough. She'd decided to keep the same assault rifle that Norman had given her, as well.

'So,' Siobhan said, 'where do we start?'

Blaize walked over to one of the ruined stalls and looked at the collapsed pile of rotting wood and broke off a piece of a large board, turning it over in her hand, examining it.

'This… it's been disturbed recently…'

Siobhan started to grow uneasy.

'What do you mean by that?'

'There are shoe prints on it. But here's the thing. There's only one trail, instead of a set.'

'And Ben had his left leg bitten off by that Leaper over back at St. Heliers,' Siobhan supplied, referring to the labels the Rough Riders had given the "special" Sickened. 'That means-'

Without warning, a shaking fist sprouted from the ground in the middle of the pile, and opened before sinking down quickly to get a grip it. With one pull, it dragged itself out of the pile and groaned at Blaize before shambling up to its feet.

It sure as hell wasn't Ben. It had milky-white eyes and two legs.

Blaize quickly rifle-butted it away and shot a round into its face, which killed it, but then both she and Siobhan started hearing the same sound from the other rows of stalls. It was obvious that more Sickened were getting up, disturbed by the gunshot.

Without a word, both teenagers started running – judging by the sounds, there would be more Sickened than they would probably be able to handle on their own.

As they ran, firing the occasional burst into the oncoming horde, they approached the large, dark green concrete building that housed the indoor bull-riding stadium and petting zoo that faced a large plaza and the Haunted Mansion situated on the other side, and for a few seconds Blaize thought that she and Siobhan would be able to run inside and find a better spot to face the Sickened that were after them.

She was proven wrong, however, as when they neared the blackened, mostly-intact glass doors of the building, the ground started to shake, and a Tank burst out of the doors, ripping them off their hinges, roaring an inhuman roar as it did so.

Despite the stench that followed the monster as it charged at them, Blaize let a humorous grin cross her face as she noticed the clown paint and big red honky nose still remarkably present on its face.

However, this Tank proved itself to be of no laughing matter as it grabbed one of the broken glass doors and flung it at both of the girls as it charged, roaring again.

Diving out of the way, the glass projectile shattered harmlessly on the brick pavement as both girls rolled, stood up and faced the oncoming Tank. It seemed like the sheer presence of the Tank had scared off the horde as it drew back an arm to punch Siobhan, who was closest to the thing.

Ducking to dodge the blow, she rose up again, and rifle-butted the Tank's face with her shotgun in return, causing a satisfying "HONK!" sound before she fired directly into its face and started to back off.

The effect the pellets had on the Tank's face weren't as effective as the last time Siobhan's shotgun had fired in the face of a Tank. The thing immediately recoiled and roared in pain, clutching its face with both of its massive hands, giving both girls time to run across the plaza and to the only place that wasn't blocked off by rubble and detritus – the Haunted Mansion.

Both Blaize and Siobhan knew that their weapons weren't going to be enough to kill a Tank this time. Although Siobhan's shotgun had been used to decapitate a Tank before, as Blaize remembered, it was a lucky shot, and that particular Tank had been worn down after almost a minute of continuous firepower by four people, not two.

That aside, despite the large amount of space they had to be able to out-manoeuvre the Tank, both teenagers knew that they were getting tired already. The exhaustion from their previous fights with the Sickness was already catching up to them, despite earlier attempts to ward it off.

As both girls ran up the steps and backed up towards the doors of the Haunted Mansion, which were illuminated by garbage can fires, Siobhan took a good look at Blaize as she drew in another shaky breath. The doors to the Haunted Mansion were barred. They couldn't get in.

'Y'know… since it looks like this might be the end… I think I might as well say something,' Siobhan said, catching her breath.

'What is it?' Blaize asked her, watching the Tank try to remove the pellets that were in its face.

'Well… well, I think I should've said this before… but, well, since for a while…' Siobhan paused and swallowed. '…I think I've had feelings for you.'

Blaize turned her gaze from the Tank over to Siobhan, and for a few seconds, her red eyes were trying to gauge through Siobhan's green ones wether or not she was joking. She realized that she wasn't, and that-

'You know… I… I think I might've had feelings for you, too,' she admitted, giving her a weary smile. 'And to be quite honest-'

She was interrupted as the Tank roared again, and both teenagers tore their attention back towards the large Sickened as it tore a large chunk out of the ground, obviously seeing the futility of trying to get the pellets out of its face, and lobbed it at them.

Diving away in opposite directions to avoid the projectile, they were amazed when they looked at the door of the Haunted Mansion to find that there was no splintering of wood – it seemed like the doors had just magically opened to let the rock in.

As the Tank charged at them with a pissed-off look on its wrecked face, Blaize was about to stand up to try and face the thing when a hand on her shoulder stopped her from doing so.

'Stay down!' a voice she could barely remember told her. 'This one's mine!'

She looked up to find a man wearing jeans and a dark blue t-shirt that bore the symbol of the Rainbow's End "Bull-Shifters" Bull-riding Club standing over her, holding a large weapon that vaguely resembled a very large rectangular and block-shaped pump shotgun and looking towards the Tank. His dark brown skin and overall look gave away the fact that he was Maori and in his thirties, and had Maori tattoos over his arms and neck.

He had short black hair as well as a short beard, and his brown eyes squinted at the Tank for a second before he raised his weapon at it and fired.

The sound the weapon made was similar to a cannon going off. When Blaize looked at the Tank, she realized just how powerful it was – the man had managed to blow the Tank's right arm clean off, and judging from the how far the Tank was and how thick its arm was in the first place, she couldn't believe what had just happened.

Nonetheless, the man pumped his weapon again with ease, and walked down the steps, looking at the Tank roar in pain and clutch the stump of its arm, and then with one hand, stuck the end of the barrel of his weapon in front of its face, and fired, ensuring that it was now dead.

The man then slung the weapon over his shoulder and offered a large hand to Blaize to help pick her up, which she took. Helping her up to her feet amazingly easily, she noticed that his arms were thick with muscle – not the bodybuilder's kind of muscle, but the kind you got when you lifted heavy things on a regular basis. Or worked on a farm.

'You must be Ben's sister,' the man said to Sonja before helping Siobhan up. 'I'm Mike Calhoun.'

Blaize nodded, taking a good look at him.

'Thanks for the help there,' she said. 'Is… is Ben okay?'

Mike gave her a smile and nodded.

'He's fine at the moment. Come, we'd best get back inside before the rest of the Sickened realize that Tank's now dead.'

With that, Blaize and Siobhan were led inside as Mike closed the large wooden Haunted Mansion doors behind them.

The Haunted Mansion, indeed, looked just like a normal mansion lobby, with a double staircase that led up to the second floor, three doors woven between the staircases that led to other areas that were blocked off, and complete with old sofas and a large set of still-functioning chandeliers casting a yellow, ominous glow over everything.

This would've looked like a normal mansion were it not for the fake bloodstains, cobwebs and broken mirrors on the walls as well as broken hidden projectors and speakers hanging from the walls like tentacles and the large, obscene concrete rock that was ledged in the wall thrown by the now-dead clown-Tank. Siobhan peered suspiciously at a few of the lifelike mannequin corpses that had been "dumped" in one of the corners.

'Y'know, I like the irony, the Haunted Mansion being the scariest place to be when it's not an apocalypse, but the safest when there _is_ one,' she said.

At this Mike chuckled.

'Well, actually, this _was_ the only place left that we could hole up in,' he explained, 'not to mention Bernie, my son, begging me to set this place up as a safehouse.'

He led the teenagers up the staircase to another large wooden door, which had the sign "RIDE CLOSED" on it, and opened it, which revealed a large hall.

However, the hall was different to that of the lobby, as here, the wood and paint had been stripped down, leaving only the grey concrete skeleton of the building. Plastic sheets hung from the ceiling, steel workbenches lined the walls, and the whole room was illuminated by both electrical white lights and garbage can fires.

In the middle of the hall there was another garbage can fire, but there were four people sitting in chairs around it, talking to each other, one wearing a blue shirt, jeans and blue cap that shared Mike's black hair and dark brown skin that could hardly be older than ten, a pretty girl with blonde hair and blue eyes that looked to be about in her mid-twenties that wore an engineer's thick brown overalls and cap, an old man who wore a white jumper and brown pants who had the look of a doctor in his fifties, and one figure that Blaize recognised instantly.

'Hey! Ben! I found your sister!' Mike called out.

At that, Ben turned around in his seat and stood up, almost not believing his eyes.

'Sonja!' he exclaimed, but already Blaize had ran up to him and was giving him a tight hug. 'You came back for me!'

'Of course I would,' Blaize said, letting him go and giving him a smile. 'You'd be lost without your big sister watching over you, now wouldn't you?'

Ben nodded, smiling back before looking down at his left leg.

'Well, you like my new leg?' he asked her as he pulled up his red shorts to show her Dr. Livingston's work. 'It's only slightly sore now, thanks to a few long-lasting painkillers.'

Both Blaize and Siobhan's eyes widened as they saw that Dr. Livingston had attached one of Ben's mini-flamers to the stump of his left leg, so now it seemed as if it were biologically attached. Given how Ben seemed to stand normally, Blaize had to give it to Dr. Livingston that he did a hell of a good job in finding an… _appropriate…_ replacement for Ben's leg.

'Well…' Blaize struggled to find the right words. 'Well, looks like you've got some new improvements to your leg.' She coughed. 'Mum and Dad's going to be _real happy_ about this, I'm sure.' In her head Blaize reminded herself to tell their parents to get more fireproof furniture after all this was over.

'It's pretty cool,' Ben nodded excitedly, oblivious to the sarcasm in Blaize's remark.

He was about to talk some more until Mike, who'd taken a seat next to the boy, spoke up.

'Well, aren't you going to introduce us to your friends, Ben?' he asked him.

Ben cleared his throat.

'Ahem. Well, you've met Mike already. The boy next to him is Bernie, who's his son, and learning stuff from him. The girl's Ashley Winchester, Mike's technical wife-'

'-Fiancé,' Ashley corrected him.

'Yes, well, _fiancé_,' Ben said, using the correct terminology, 'and the old man is, as you've probably guessed, Dr. Stanislaus Livingston, the Liberators' nano-technician.' He turned and looked at the four of them. 'Guys, this is Sonja, my sister, and Siobhan Skibursky, one of her friends.'

Blaize wondered inside wether or not Ben had decided to avoid asking about Norman deliberately.

'Well, nice to meet the both of you. Take a seat – we've got plenty of space around here.' Mike gestured towards a few empty seats around the fire, which both girls sat down in as he examined the both of them closely. 'The both of you look pretty exhausted at the moment. Hard fight, eh?'

Blaize nodded.

'We haven't had much rest,' she admitted. She yawned lazily. 'So, what about you? You seem like you just woke up.'

'Nah. Been up for quite a while, too,' Mike said. 'You don't get employed as a master engineer if you go dozing off so easily.'

Again, Blaize nodded.

'You don't seem like the kind of person that'd be doing the work of an engineer. You know…'

Mike raised his eyebrows at her.

'Because I look like a farmer?' he finished for her, and gave a hearty chuckle. He flexed an arm. 'I'm only this big because I don't trust anyone except Ashley and Bernie to carry stuff for the nano-sentry guns we make. Don't be fooled, I didn't make it to be a Master Engineer just because I carried around heavy stuff.'

At that, Ashley smiled.

'Come on, Mike. Stop showing off in front of the kids,' she said.

'So, you're his fiancé,' Siobhan noted. Ashley simply beamed back.

'Yup. Known Mike since kindergarten. As soon as I was legal, I got pregnant with this little smart bundle of joy here,' she said, smiling and rubbing Bernie's blue cap playfully while he just sat there silently, smiling at his mother in approval. 'We were going to get married at Christmas, but, well, it's hard to get married when the priest's been infected with the Sickness.'

She sighed.

'The Sickness turned our lives upside-down. At the moment, there's no cure for it, only the possibility of one that Dr. Livingston here seems to be on the verge of breaking.'

It was then Blaize noticed that Dr. Livingston was peering at her, as if he was evaluating her for something, and she began to feel uncomfortable.

'Miss Ignis, are those eyes of yours… are they… natural? Or contacts?' he asked her.

Both Ashley and Mike took a closer look at Blaize.

'Wow. I didn't notice that your eyes are red until now…' Ashley said.

'Well… they're natural, not contacts,' Blaize replied. 'Erm… why?'

Dr. Livingston turned away and started speaking excitedly to Mike about something.

'This could be like your cousin!' he said, raising a finger. 'Miss Ignis here could be just like Tiffany!'

At the mention of the name, Blaize coughed, catching their attention.

'Wait. Tiffany, as in, Tiffany Glaices?' she asked the both of them.

Both head engineer and doctor's heads turned simultaneously towards her.

'You know her?' Dr. Livingston said, his eyes widening.

Blaize nodded.

'It's weird,' she said. 'I met her, yes, but that was while I was being drowned by one of the long-tongued Sickened in some sort of dream state or something like that…'

Mike's jaw dropped.

'Sonja. Are you sure it was like a dream?' he asked her. 'Because Tiffany's a psychic.'

It was then things began to make more sense than before. She was about to ask Mike more about Tiffany when Ben, who had been in deep thought for the past minute, remembered something.

'Sonja! I remember what I was going to say!' he exclaimed, turning towards her. 'You shouldn't have come here!'

Blaize raised an eyebrow at him in disbelief at his words.

'Why not?'

'Because… well, you probably heard what happened on the Liberators' van while we were on the radio, right? When the Tank attacked and Mike shot it?'

Blaize scratched her head, trying to connect what the reason was.

'Yeah. And then it turned out that it wasn't dead yet, right?'

'That's the problem! The Tank had been killed by Mike! But when the van got attacked again shortly after the Tank attack, I saw that it wasn't a Tank that was ripping apart the top of the van and destroying the radio!'

He drew in a breath.

'It wasn't a Tank,' he repeated. 'When the roof got ripped off, I saw someone that I thought had been rescued with the both of you.'

Siobhan's eyes widened as the coin dropped.

'It was Norman, wasn't it?' she asked him, to which Ben nodded. 'He got bitten by Captain Cale back at St. Heliers, and it was because of him we managed to escape, because…' she stopped, not wanting to recall what had happened earlier. '…because he _turned_ into one of those… one of those "Leader" Sickened…'

'It looks like he wasn't able to resist the Sickness anymore,' Blaize finished. 'He's here for us. If Captain Cale had been able to turn someone who's thought to be "immune" to the Sickness into a Leader Sickened…'

'…Then coming here was a trap,' Siobhan finished. 'From what I know, Norman realized that the Sickened can't get to Ash Base because they can't swim to Rangitoto Island, and they can't operate boats. The only way to infect Ash Base is to get someone who will turn into a Leader Sickened there via helicopter…'

She swallowed and looked at Ben before continuing.

'He knew that we'd come after you and the Liberators, so he caused the van to crash so that he'd have time to prepare. I'm guessing that after he bites us, he'll leave us unconscious for Captain Greg to find. He'll think we're fine, fly us back to Ash Base, and afterwards, the last bastion of hope for humanity in Auckland is gone.'

'So… so we were _bait?_' Mike asked.

Siobhan nodded.

'You were. We came along to try and save you, but we came here to be turned, just like lambs to the slaughter.'

'So, what are we going to do?' Ashley asked.

'I know how my brother thinks,' Siobhan said. 'He won't attack when Captain Greg's here with the helicopter, or else his opportunity is ruined, and taking on all seven of us is going to be too many to deal with. I'll radio Captain Greg to pick us all up at the same time, if possible. That way, Norman's lost his opportunity, and we'll deny the Sickness entrance to Ash Base.'

She stood up, took out the radio in her trench coat, and after fiddling with it for a few seconds, it sparked to life as she walked away to talk to Captain Greg while the Liberators talked amongst themselves.

Minutes later, Siobhan returned to the circle with the news.

'Captain Greg can only pick four of us up at a time,' she said. 'There's no helicopters that can pick up all of us up at the same time available at Ash Base at the moment, and he's decided that he'll pick up the Liberators first, and then us and Private Harks, when he gets here. He said he'll talk to us when he lands outside in a few minutes.'

At this, Blaize sighed and shook her head. One of the most skilled people she'd ever met, Norman, was about to become her worst nightmare.

After a few minutes, the sounds of the helicopter could be heard landing outside, and as the Liberators climbed in, Captain Greg talked to Blaize, Siobhan and Ben, who told him about the situation with Norman.

'By God, what the hell did you do to piss off a Leader Sickened?' Captain Greg asked rhetorically. 'Well, I'll have to drop the Liberators off first, and since I'm low on fuel, I'll also have to refuel, which, given what we've got, means that I'll have to wait until one of our helicopters gets back, which should be at about half-past six. You're going to have to find a good spot, and hope like hell Norman doesn't find you.'

He sighed.

'About the Leader Sickened, you better hope like hell God's on your side, because from what scattered reports I've got, Leader Sickened are perhaps the most deadly things on the face of the earth, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that. If you can, get some rest while you wait.'

'And one thing,' Siobhan said. 'Remember, if you find us unconscious, leave us. We've probably been bitten.'

'Roger that. If something happens to you, I'll let the chaplain know. Oh, and by the way, I've notified Private Harks of your location. He's en route. And remember, kids: be careful.'

Blaize nodded, and went to check on the passengers.

'Good luck,' Mike said, placing a hand on her shoulder. 'I'd give you my portable howitzer, but there's not much ammo left, and I'm not too sure if it'll do much good against one of these "Leader Sickened" fellows.'

'We'll make sure you're remembered if something goes wrong, though,' Ashley reassured her, and gave her a quick hug before clipping on hers and Bernie's helicopter harnesses.

When Blaize checked on Dr. Livingston, she found that he was giving her a smile.

'You'll do fine,' he said, patting her on the shoulder. 'I've got a feeling that will be the case, Miss Ignis. Good luck.'

After that, the helicopter lifted off as the teenagers retreated back into the comparative safety of the Haunted Mansion to wait for Private Harks.

Five and a half hours later, after Siobhan and Blaize managed to get some much-needed sleep, however, Private Harks hadn't returned, and Blaize was starting to get worried as she sat on the sofas in the lobby of the Haunted Mansion.

'I hope nothing bad happened to him,' she said, looking at the door as if it would open at any second.

Siobhan sighed, placed her hands on Blaize's shoulders, and looked at her.

'Hey. He should be fine,' she said. 'He's probably still hiding from the Sickened. Most likely, he'll be here when Captain Greg gets back here in fifteen minutes.'

Ben snorted.

'A whole horde of Sickened? I'm thinking they got him,' he speculated, ignoring the stern glares he received from Blaize and Siobhan. 'I mean, seriously, it's rats if that were the case, but out here...' his voice trailed off and he shuddered. 'From what the Liberators had seen, it was a whole lot worse here than in the city when the Sickness struck... babies strangled in their cots by their mothers wishing to give them "tranquillity", kids ripping their parents to pieces all in the name of the Sickness' "Crusade"...'

He was interrupted in his melancholic rant by the sound of a loud knocking from the large door.

It had to be Private Harks. Blaize walked over to the door and looked through the peephole that was on the door.

'What the...? There's no one out here, so then who was-'

A hand suddenly started banging on the peephole.

Blaize took another look.

'It's Private Harks,' she said, before moving the furniture that barred the door hurriedly and opened it. Private Harks was standing outside, looking around cautiously, and covered in gore.

Almost the instant the door opened, he rushed inside and then slammed the door shut behind him without waiting for Blaize to do it for him.

'Uh-oh,' Ben said, after a few seconds of silence passed.

'What is it?' Blaize asked, looking at her brother after moving the furniture back into place.

'I haven't met Private Harks before, but I'm sure about this... that's not him.'

Siobhan was staring at Private Harks as well. Blaize turned around to look at him, and it was then she realized that she hadn't looked him over properly.

Private Harks' skin was a deathly pale. Also, Blaize had overlooked one important feature.

Private Harks didn't have yellow, glowing eyes.

She backed off towards Ben and Siobhan as Siobhan picked up her shotgun and Ben strapped on his napalm tank and attached it to his flamer leg as Private Harks seemed to grin at the three of them before reaching over to the left side of his forehead with a bare hand, grabbed the skin, and pulled. It made a ripping sound not unlike paper ripping as a little bit of blood squirted as Private Harks was literally ripping his face off.

And then, to her horror, when the skin from the face ripped off, it didn't expose the muscles of the face. No, instead, what she saw was that it exposed the face of Norman Skibursky.

Quickly making short work of the rest of the skin of Private Harks that had covered him, Norman picked it up as Blaize, Ben and Siobhan watched in horror, looked at it for a second before looking back at them.

He was still wearing what he had been during the St. Heliers Incident, but now his skin was deathly pale, some parts of his clothes had holes in them as well as Private Harks' bloodstains, and he now had fully-yellow glowing eyes.

'**I thought there would be more of a "welcome back" than just _dead silence_,**' he said, poking the skin before casting it aside, '**although I will admit, this one actually put up a fight before I ripped his spine out.**'

'Norman...' Siobhan handled her shotgun nervously. 'What have you become?'

Norman grinned at this, baring sharp rows of shark-like teeth at her.

'**What I've become, Siob? You think I am... a monster. I would have thought the same of myself before my... _change_... but the Sickness... it taught me truths that made me realize that fighting it in the first place was... _unwise_. You see, the Sickness... _liberates._.. people from the prison of life... it _redeems_ them... just... like Captain Cale had _said._**'

'Wearing the skins of innocent people... planning to turn us into things like you...'

Blaize picked up her assault rifle and aimed it at Norman's head.

'Y'know, Norm, I suppose that classifies you as a monster in my book,' she continued. 'I don't wanna do this, Norm, but I'm going to have to, for all our sakes.'

'**It doesn't need to end this way. You do realize that I can tear this whole building apart, don't you? Captain Cale would've done just that, rather than ask… politely… if you would just lie down and make this… easier.**'

He sighed, as he wasn't getting an answer as Blaize's finger slowly tightened on the trigger.

'**Well. It seems like you want to do this… the _hard way_.**'

And then, without warning, Norman leapt upwards and through the ceiling, screaming the same inhuman scream as Leapers scream as Blaize let loose a trail of bullets at him.

Silence reigned for a few seconds.

Looking around them for any sign of where Norman had went, they were given their answer seconds later when a large portion of the ceiling collapsed as Norman started kicking it down and crippling the skeleton of the building. Blaize looked at where it was about to fall, and realized that it was about to fall on Siobhan.

Tackling Siobhan away from the large piece just in time, both girls picked themselves up as they realized that the rest of the roof was about to collapse upon them, cracks appearing along the edges of the ceiling. The only chance they had now was outside.

Moving the furniture that barred the door quickly, the teenagers kicked the doors open and ran outside just as the mansion collapsed in on itself.

Blaize surveyed their surroundings. Norman was nowhere to be seen.

Then, she heard the sounds of a car crash in the distance, and as she turned towards the source of the sound, she saw a large red van flying towards them.

Once again diving out of the way, the teenagers felt the ground shake as the vehicle crashed into the ground near them, bounce upwards and land into the ruins of the Haunted Mansion with a thundering crash of metal and wood.

As Blaize picked herself up once again, she looked towards the other end of the plaza, where the large dark green concrete building they'd passed earlier lay, and saw Norman perched on top, observing them.

'**Face it, you cannot defeat me,**' he taunted. '**The Sickness will claim you _all_...**'

Blaize aimed her rifle at him and fired off a few shots, which hit him, but it was as if he didn't seem to mind. Instead, he leapt off it and towards Siobhan, who was still picking herself up.

He landed right in front of her, and was about to grab her with one clawed hand when Ben let loose with his flamer leg, engulfing Norman in flames. Unfazed by this, he simply turned around and kicked him in the chest, sending the pyromaniac flying into a wall.

He was about to leap at Ben when a hail of shotgun pellets raked his back, and he turned around to see Siobhan firing upon him relentlessly as Blaize fired a few more bursts at him.

Snarling at his own sister, he leapt at her, tackling her to the ground. Before he could do anything else, though, Blaize had rifle-butted him off Siobhan, aimed at him, and held down the trigger on her assault rifle.

Crouching and still unfazed by the bullets, he snarled once again and leapt at Blaize, tackling her to the ground, but this time rolling around a few times before managing to get on top, and then, after baring his fangs, sunk them deep into Blaize's right shoulder.

The pain was excruciating – she screamed in agony as she could feel the razor-sharp fangs doing their work. The power of the bite was such that she let go of her assault rifle.

And then, suddenly, Norman let go.

'**_Gaaah!_**' he screeched to the sky before leaping off her and into the middle of the plaza, crouched and snarling in pain. His teeth were starting to dissolve as if someone had poured acid onto them.

Blaize tried to pick herself up, but only managed to get up onto her knees. The pain was so bad that it stopped any other action other than speech.

'What... the... hell...?' she grimaced.

'**I... always knew you were... special... in some way, Blaize...**' Norman snarled. '**Your blood... it fights the Sickness in a way that no one else's can... it's the same reason why your eyes... are red... it's the reason those other Sickened didn't bite you...**'

It was then she remembered – her blood was supposedly acidic to Sickened. But, however, unlike the Sickened that had bitten her before, Norman's fangs had injected some sort of venom that was now beginning to ravage her body from the inside.

The pain coursed through her body. She started to wheeze a little bit as she struggled to even breathe. But then, all of a sudden, it started to go away just as fast as it had came. Her breathing returned to normal.

She felt the Sickness try to overcome her, but for some strange reason, it was failing.

It was as if it were being burned away.

She placed a hand on her shoulder to stop the bleeding only to find that she wasn't bleeding anymore. She looked at her shoulder, and to her surprise, the wound was starting to disappear, and she felt something renew her vigour. She was _regenerating_.

Siobhan was still picking herself up when Norman attacked again, tackling her to the ground once more as his fangs regrew.

'**The Sickness may not be able to claim Blaize, Siob... but I do not think the same applies to _you!_**'

With that, he snarled, and sunk what remained of his fangs into Siobhan's shoulder-

-or he would have, were it not for something grabbing him by his shoulder, yanking him off Siobhan and then throwing him into one of the walls of the dark green building with such unexpected force that even Norman couldn't rebound off the wall. Instead, he fell down onto the ground on his stomach.

He snarled again, clenched his right hand and brought it down upon the ground in anger as he picked himself up, dazed and weakened by the impact.

Siobhan looked up to find her saviour.

It was Blaize. She had gotten to her feet and somehow found the strength to throw Norman into the wall with only one hand. She now held out a hand to Siobhan, who gladly took it and pulled herself up.

'Jesus...' Ben said to himself as he picked himself up, Blaize's now-enhanced hearing picking up his words. 'That's the last time I mock my sister ever again, that's for sure.'

Blaize smiled at Ben for a second before diverting her attention back to Norman, who snarled at her before leaping at her. Sidestepping the leap as he landed a few steps away, she then sent a few bursts of gunfire his way before he spun around and knocked her assault rifle out of her hands.

Losing her grip on the weapon, she screeched at Norman like a beautiful banshee before swinging a punch into his face with her right hand, the force causing him to lose his balance before Blaize swung another one with her left hand, grabbed his neck and then planted a shoe right in the middle of his chest, when sent him flying into the wall again.

Norman couldn't fight back. He picked himself up, but the whole struggle had already drained him of the energy he once had. He could just barely stand as the concussions he now suffered from sought to bring him back down onto his knees.

'**Impossible...**' he blurted out with what remained of his breath, '**the Sickness... not only were you able to resist it, you... gained... the benefits it gives... inhuman strength... speed... regeneration... how is this possible...?**'

Blaize then leapt at him, landing on his chest and pinning him to the ground.

'It's because I'm different. You said that yourself, Norm,' she replied. 'Now, I don't want to do this, really, I don't, but for all our sakes... for the safety of everyone...'

She then grabbed his head, and then, in one move, ripped it clean off. She longingly looked at the decapitated head of Norman and sighed as the yellow glow faded from his eyes.

'Y'know, I always thought you were kinda cute at times, when you were... alive. Honestly, if there was another way, I would've taken it. Rest in peace, Norm.'

She then put the head down onto his chest and stood up and looked at both Ben and Siobhan. The sounds of Captain Greg's helicopter returning could be heard.

'Blaize! Siobhan! Miss me?' Captain Greg shouted over the rotating blades of the helicopter as he landed.

'Of course,' Siobhan shouted back, smiling back at him.

'Where's Private Harks?'

'Gone, sir,' Siobhan added as she took one last look at the burning remains of her brother's remains and then back at the ruins of the Haunted Mansion. 'Went like a true hero.'

'Damnit.' Captain Greg inhaled grimly. 'Well, we'd better get moving. The Liberators are planning to start a celebration party for the three of you.'

Blaize, Ben and Siobhan climbed into the helicopter as it took off.

'That's nice of them,' Blaize said, grinning, 'although I could really use a good rest right about now.'

Captain Greg grinned back at her as the helicopter lifted off, and departed from the ruins of Rainbow's End.

Despite their victory here, however, the mission of the survivors wasn't yet over.


	6. Part Five

A/N: Yes, yes, I know it's been a while. I think you guys have had a good enough look at Part 4, eh? :D This chapter's a tad bit short, but Part Six'll be longer, and it'll be up right away. Please, read and review! Enjoy :D

_Part Five: Ash Base, Rangitoto Island, Auckland, New Zealand, 1:28 PM, 23rd December, 2012_

Six hours later, back at Ash Base, Blaize and Siobhan had managed to escape from the rest of the "Welcome Back" party the Liberators had thrown them and onto the wooden viewing balcony at the top of Rangitoto Island, and found a bench and sat down on it.

Blaize looked at Siobhan.

'So... back at Rainbow's End, you said you had feelings for me,' she piped up.

'Of course,' Siobhan replied, smiling. 'Want me to prove it?'

Blaize smiled back at her, and seconds later, the both of them were hugging each other tightly.

They were so caught up in the moment that they didn't hear Captain Greg walk up the wooden steps to check on them.

'Uh, Blaize? Siobhan?' he called out. 'You two okay?'

He poked his head around the corner just to see them hugging. He knew what kind of people hugged the way Blaize and Siobhan were hugging now usually became. And then, he saw them separate and then their heads started to lean towards each other slowly, Blaize's eyes looking deep into Siobhan's.

'Blimey,' he whispered to himself before knocking on the wooden railing. 'Having a good time, I see?' he said, louder this time so that they could hear him.

Quickly separating at the sound of Captain Greg's voice, Blaize and Siobhan immediately looked at him, the both of them giving him nervous grins and twiddling their fingers before Captain Greg chuckled.

'I got no problem with lesbianism,' he reassured them, taking an accurate guess at the situation and smiling to make himself seem harmless. 'But, of course, that's not what I came up here for. Dr. Livingston down at the lab's heard about your, erm, _mutation_, Blaize, and he urgently wants to test you for something.'

Blaize had told Captain Greg about the new "powers" she had acquired when Norman had bitten her on the shoulder merely hours ago, and she guessed it worried him, so he probably told Dr. Livingston of the Liberators. Of course, Dr. Livingston had already wanted to see her, anyways.

'Seriously? Now?' she whined.

'Well, although I wouldn't mind watching the both of you go ahead with whatever you're doing at the moment, Dr. Livingston reckons this is important,' Captain Greg joked. 'Come on. Siobhan can come along, too.'

Ten minutes later, Blaize and Siobhan had arrived at Dr. Livingston's new lab, where the old man had taken a saliva and blood sample and was testing it with some results he'd found from other survivors' bases online when Ben entered. Captain Greg had gone off to comfort Private Harks' wife as she mourned his loss at Rainbow's End.

The lab was a large room, with tables adorning every corner of the room, which were filled with samples from the Sickened and different experiments, and a row of chairs next to the entrance.

The place had used to be an old science testing lab that had been secretly built by the New Zealand Government years before for science testing. Dr. Livingston himself was hunched over the computer that was situated in the opposite end of the room, now wearing a white lab coat.

'I heard the news,' Ben said, sitting down next to Blaize and Siobhan, 'what's going on?'

'Ah, nothing to be worried about, Mister Ignis,' Dr. Livingston called out from the computer in his British accent. 'Rather, heh, it's the Sickened that should be worried!'

'What do you mean?' Blaize asked the doctor, who simply turned away from the computer and beckoned them over to a table next to the machine.

'Come here, children. There's something you might want to see.'

Walking over to the table, Blaize realized that there was the severed hand of a Sickened stuffed inside of a large beaker, with a test tube of the blood sample Dr. Livingston took off Blaize.

'Now, you might not see anything different with this blood,' the doctor said, swirling the sample in the test tube, 'but according to my hypothesis, the reaction we should get from this hand when some of this blood is poured onto it should be very interesting...'

Picking up the test tube gingerly, he examined it first before slowly tipping a good deal of Blaize's blood onto the Sickened hand.

What happened next surprised even the doctor.

As soon as Blaize's blood touched the hand, it started to writhe as if it were still alive and in pain as the blood started to eat away at it as if it were acid. Dr. Livingston raised an eyebrow.

'Interesting... very interesting... exactly the polar opposite of what the others said online...' he said to himself, scribbling away at a clipboard. 'Very interesting indeed...'

'"Exactly the polar opposite"?' Siobhan piped up. 'What do you mean by that?'

The doctor coughed before speaking.

'Well,' he explained, 'you see, Sonja here has what we've called an "Immunity Strain" in her blood, which, of course, eats away at the flesh of Sickened, much like how a flame eats away at a matchstick, which I dubbed "Flamebane" – which you already knew about. However, from what I've heard, there is another girl, who also lives in Auckland City that exhibits qualities that can be considered the polar opposite of qualities that can be noted on Miss Ignis here, notably in the eyes as of far.'

'Tiffany Glaices,' Siobhan correctly guessed, giving the doctor a speculative look. 'Can you be more specific in what is so similar between her and Blaize?'

'Well, you see, Tiffany has eyes a shade of blue that is unnatural in this world. Looking at Miss Ignis here, I hypothesize that Tiffany's blood can do the opposite of Sonja's – _freeze_ any Sickened touched by it.'

He raised a finger to stop any further inquiries from Siobhan.

'Of course, Tiffany Glacies is, technically, a rare specimen. Using yours and Tiffany's blood, I can hypothesize that we can create a chemical compound that can possibly reverse the effects of the Sickness! Or, failing that, we can create a virus that can help us eliminate even the apparently nigh-indestructible and elusive true leader of the Sickness, the Avatar of the Sickness himself! So, there's only one thing we've got to do.'

Everyone knew what he was going to propose even before he said it.

'Find Tiffany Glacies.'


	7. Part Six

A/N: Here's Part Six! Remember to read and review, please! :D Enjoy :D

_Part Six: Ash Base, Rangitoto Island, Auckland, New Zealand, 8:28 PM, 23rd December, 2012_

'So, is there anything else you guys need?'

Captain Greg examined Blaize, Siobhan and Ben as they assembled in front of him.

He'd been told about the mission that Dr. Livingston was sending the three of them on back to Auckland City, and he'd seen to it that they had been properly geared for their assignment of finding Tiffany Glaices, and properly geared they most definitely were.

Although they refused any extra armour, Ben and Siobhan were now armed with two of the biggest weapons they could now carry. Mike Calhoun had built Ben two flamethrowers that were now firmly attached to his forearms that had chainsaw blades attached to the ends, both weapons activated by switches that he would hold, an "experimental" design that had proved to be far, far more than simply useful when Ben tested it out on a few combat dummies.

Siobhan, on the other hand, opted for Mike's "Portable Howitzer" after it was discovered through experimenting on corpses that the hides of "Leader Sickened" were most likely slightly tougher than that of Tanks. When Captain Greg first heard how much damage the big gun did to a Tank, he didn't believe what he'd heard until Siobhan tried using it against a target in the firing range – after the thing punched a massive hole in the firing range's meter-thick concrete wall, his doubts were cast aside almost as quickly as they'd came. It could also fire normal shotgun pellets as well, which made it much more valuable than Siobhan's original pump shotgun.

Siobhan had also decided to take a machete, as if her Portable Howitzer wasn't dangerous enough.

Blaize was the only one out of the three who didn't pick any new guns for herself, as, from what Captain Greg had seen her do to a combat dummy, she obviously didn't need any. She _was_ the weapon. Nonetheless, she'd taken more ammo for her assault rifle, as well as the red axe that had been kept next to the fire extinguisher.

Captain Greg had also made sure that the teenagers got adequate rest before they set off, making sure that they wouldn't fall over in exhaustion during their search for Tiffany.

He would've got some of the Rough Riders to help find Tiffany with them, but earlier he'd received signals from Sergeant Cyrus back in the city that the Sickened were getting smarter – since the numbers of "Leader Sickened" had increased recently, he'd reported that they were now capturing live survivors to use them to sail boats over to Ash Base with their undead cargo, and Captain Greg knew that he needed his men here to help stop the assault that would come.

As the clock in the radio room seemed to loom over them, he knew that he had to send them on their way. Any unnecessary delays to the preparations would increase the risk that they might not be able to find Tiffany before the Sickness did.

Blaize took a quick glance at Ben and Siobhan, and shook her head.

'Doesn't seem like it,' she said.

'Well, best we be off, then,' Captain Greg replied, giving the teenagers an uncertain look before walking out of the radio room towards the helicopter pad, the three of them following him out.

The helicopter ride back to Auckland was uneventful. As the biting cold returned back to Auckland City, everything was almost silent in the helicopter as Ben polished his flamethrower leg, and Blaize and Siobhan were just sitting on the opposite side of the helicopter, looking out the windows and whispering to each other.

When the helicopter landed at the Auckland City Wharf Helipad and the teenagers hopped out, Captain Greg took one last look at them.

'Remember your mission, kids. Get Tiffany, find a safe spot to hide, radio me, and stay safe until I get back to pick you guys up. Understood?'

With that, they nodded as he took off, and Blaize turned to look at the ruins of Auckland City from the other side of the wharf's iconic red steel fence before her once more, small amounts of freshly-fallen snow falling from the night sky and amongst its blackened debris causing a contrast that made Blaize uneasy. The warm sun that had dominated most of the day had given way to the dark, cold and unforgiving winter night.

As the teenagers looked around them cautiously, it was almost dead silent.

'So, where do we start?' Ben asked.

Blaize turned towards him and Siobhan.

'I reckon we'll check in with Sergeant Cyrus first. He might have an idea of where Tiffany is,' she suggested. 'Otherwise, the Aotea Centre looks like a good spot to hide, so maybe she's there.'

Both Ben and Siobhan nodded in agreement, and they set off towards Sergeant Cyrus' safehouse. It wasn't long before they found a few Sickened lingering around the exit of the wharf, which was a long distance away from where Captain Greg had dropped them off.

'Okay. Remember, its best if the Sickness doesn't know that we're here,' Blaize whispered as they took cover behind one of cranes. 'Ben, Siobhan, stay back here. I'll take them out.'

Ben was about to raise an eyebrow at Blaize when he noticed that she was already gone, climbing up the large crane almost as if she were born to do so.

As she climbed, she could feel her senses tingling. The Sickened near the only exit out of the wharf were Leapers, and from what she remembered about them apart from that fact that one had bitten Ben's left leg off was that they also acted as sentries for the rest of the Sickened. One scream from one of them, and the rest of the horde would follow.

When she reached the top, she watched the grey-hooded Leapers as they made their patrol around the gate.

They were formidable opponents in their own right, and this pack of four would've proved almost impossible to Ben and Siobhan to handle on their own without their new weapons, but Blaize knew instinctually that she was better than these Sickened. She could hear their almost-nonexistent heart pulses beating as they communicated to each other in their own gibberish tongue. She didn't speak their language – or rather, their vocal ones, anyway.

Leaping silently off the crane using her new strength, she landed right in the midst of them, tackling one down to the ground in her leap, ripping its head off with one hand, dodged a swipe from another and broke its neck with a well-placed punch, and then backhanded the third with her same hand, smashing it into the ground and crushing it.

Then, she sensed the fourth was about to scream to alert its brethren to the presence of the humans, and quickly snatching the fire axe she'd taken from Ash Base from her back, she flung it at the sentry, the weapon's blade lodging itself into its skull just seconds before it could alert the others.

It was over in only a few seconds. A smile crossed her face as she could feel the adrenaline rush through her body. It was as if she was born to do this, but she knew better. It was only because of her new powers she felt this way. Signalling Ben and Siobhan over by waving at them, she walked over to the last Leaper and pulled her axe free from its head and placing it back on holster on her back as Ben and Siobhan arrived.

'Holy shit,' Ben cursed, looking at the corpses of the Leapers strewn around him. 'That was quick.' Siobhan simply nodded in agreement.

'Well, get used to it,' Blaize said, giving the both of them a smile. 'I suppose it's the new me.'

'I guess I like the new you,' Siobhan said, smirking at her and sneaking in a wink that Ben didn't notice.

With that, the three of them made their way back to Queen Street, where it all began, with Blaize scouted ahead of them, eliminating any Sickened she found quickly and silently. They found Sergeant Cyrus's safehouse still present in the Kathmandu store.

Blaize knocked on the red steel door, which was quickly opened by Sergeant Cyrus, who ushered them in before closing it behind him and blocking it with furniture.

'I heard from Captain Greg that you might be coming,' he said, looking the teenagers over. 'This Tiffany Glaices girl seems to be extremely important if the three of you decide to brave the Sickness to come back here to see me.'

Siobhan nodded.

'You wouldn't happen to know where she might be, would you?' she asked him. The sergeant shook his head.

'Afraid not. There's nothing new here except this envelope some guy handed to me earlier. He said to follow the instructions on it, which I did.' He produced a large white envelope from his trench coat and handed it to Siobhan. 'It said to scan whatever's inside and transfer the information to Ash Base. Not sure how he knew I had a working scanner, though.'

As Siobhan looked at it, Blaize recognised a particular scent in the air.

Lavender.

'Wait, can I have a look at that?' Siobhan nodded and handed her the envelope. To the surprise of everyone else in the room, she immediately held the envelope to her nose, closing her eyes and breathing the smell of it deeply.

'What the _hell_ is she doing?' Sergeant Cyrus wondered aloud to Siobhan and Ben.

'Hell if I know,' Ben said, raising an eyebrow at his sister.

Blaize opened her eyes and looked at the envelope.

'Lavender,' she said aloud. She turned to Sergeant Cyrus before anyone could say anything. 'Are you sure it was a man who gave you this?'

The sergeant scratched his head, trying to remember.

'I'm not sure. He was wearing all black, with a hood. Didn't speak much, but he sounded a tad bit too much like a Sickened for me to be comfortable with his presence.' He peered at Blaize. 'Why do you ask?'

'Because,' Blaize replied, 'this letter was written by Tiffany Glaices. I can smell it.'

Sergeant Cyrus raised an eyebrow at her quizzically.

'You can _what?_'

'It's some sort of, uh… _new thing_ she can do,' Siobhan hurriedly explained. 'She's got the abilities of a Leader Sickened. Don't ask me how.'

Blaize opened the envelope, and looked at the papers inside.

'This was written by Tiffany,' she said as she examined the papers. 'I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but it looks like some sort of schematics for a device or something that includes syringes. Something Dr. Livingston would use.'

At that, Sergeant Cyrus coughed as Blaize handed Siobhan the papers to look at.

'Actually, the man said to let Dr. Livingston look at these,' he supplied helpfully. 'Again, I'm not sure how he knew the Liberators or the fact that they were now on Ash Base. Not many people outside of the Rough Riders know who the Liberators are.'

He sighed.

'Can you at least tell me what the blimey frak is going on? How it is that Tiffany Glaices seems to know all this?'

Siobhan raised an eyebrow at the bewildered sergeant before realizing that he probably wasn't told everything by Captain Greg.

'Tiffany Glaices is a psychic,' she explained, glancing at him before continuing to scan the papers. 'The only reason why we even know her as much as we do is because she appeared to Blaize in some sort of trance soon after we left this safehouse, while she was being drowned by a "Grabber" Sickened.'

It was then Sergeant Cyrus nodded understandingly.

'Still, though, these documents look extremely complicated for even a psychic to write,' he pointed out.

He sighed.

'Well. You'd best be careful, kids. From what I've gathered after eavesdropping on some Leader Sickened, the Avatar of the Sickness is planning something big, apart from using human hostages to ship Sickened assault forces in to Ash Base. I'm not too sure what it is, but apparently, the Avatar used the spinal fluid of about five Leader Sickened to get the ball rolling.'

Blaize coughed.

'So, did Dr. Livingston get the schematics?' she asked him, changing the topic.

'He did. He and Mike Calhoun are assembling that machine as we speak. Apparently, it's easy to build, which means that they should be finished with it around now. As far as I can tell, it's similar to a machine we've used before to test out various liquids in our grenades.'

'But… but what use is the machine going to have?' Ben wondered aloud.

'I think I can explain,' Siobhan said, after spotting a small block of text at the bottom of one of the papers. 'There's a note here saying that the machine and an "empty grenade" should be brought along when we're evacuated from Auckland City with Tiffany Glaices.'

She swallowed and looked up at Blaize before continuing.

'The fact that the machine's using two syringes means something. I'm thinking that whoever was behind this has some idea of how the Avatar of the Sickness can be defeated – by mixing both Blaize and Tiffany's blood in a single grenade, and, from what I can guess, shoving it down his throat and letting it explode.'

'But… but why not just bomb the Avatar of the Sickness? It'd just be easier,' Ben pointed out.

'We haven't tried that yet,' Sergeant Cyrus said. 'We've got bomber jets at Ash Base, but Captain Greg's decided not to use them just yet.'

Blaize nodded.

'Well. Do you have any ideas on where Tiffany could be, Sergeant Cyrus?'

He nodded.

'The man who dropped the envelope off mentioned something about some unnamed underground basketball court further up Queen Street, close to the Aotea Centre. You might want to try there.'

With that, Blaize nodded, and after asking a few, unimportant questions, the group left the safehouse and continued on with their search up the street towards the underground basketball court, searching the ruins of the city for any sign of Tiffany and eliminating any Sickened that were in their way quickly and silently.

'It's sad,' Siobhan said as she looked longingly at the large fibreglass Santa monument that was perched on the entrance of the now-destroyed Whitcoulls bookstore, the large holes in his once-full belly, burns along his edges and one of his eyes hanging out reducing the ancient reminder of Auckland City's festive season to a mere mockery of its former glory. Blaize didn't need to hear the change in Siobhan's breathing patterns to realize that she was upset, even though she'd most likely seen it before.

Blaize stopped in her tracks and turned towards Siobhan, putting her hands on her shoulders and giving her a hopeful smile.

'Don't worry. This'll all be brought back to normal soon,' she reassured her, gripping her shoulders tightly. 'I swear it. You remember what I said, don't you?'

Siobhan just nodded, giving Blaize a weak smile, Ben gazing at the worn-down monument and spotting something. His face quickly turned into one of horror when he realized what it was he was seeing.

'Oh, _shit_!'

Siobhan and Blaize turned around to see what it was Ben had spotted, and suddenly, Blaize knew why he'd cursed. There, from one of the many large holes in Santa's belly, was one, large yellow glowing eye glaring back at them.

And then, it roared a loud, bestial roar.

Soon after, the yellow glowing eye disappeared, and a few seconds later, the snapping of the last of the metal wires that held up the monument Santa's fibreglass weight could be heard.

As the monument fell towards them, Ben and Siobhan dived to their left and Blaize to her right, the teenagers just barely moving out of the way of the structure just in time as it crashed into the ground, defeated.

While Ben and Siobhan were picking themselves up, Blaize saw a large, apelike figure hanging from one of the windows of the ruined Whitcoulls building looking back at her, and then jumped off the building, landing in front of her.

The creature was massive, twice the size of a Tank, and Blaize knew instantly from the massive wounds that covered its bloodstained black fur, large fangs that stuck out of its mouth and the simian face that now scrutinized her that this was no ordinary Sickened. She knew that this thing was much, much worse.

'**So… you're the one who has derailed most of my plans…**' the thing snarled at her. '**The one my brethren call… the Inferno.**'

She returned the Avatar's glare for a few seconds before leaping towards him, reckoning that she had a chance at killing him herself.

She'd planned on somersaulting over the Avatar's head, landing on his back and ripping his head off, but she'd miscalculated one thing: the Avatar of the Sickness was much, much faster than she'd thought he'd be. In mid-leap, he'd snatched her in mid-air with one large hand, and flung her into the ruins of the Whitcoulls store.

Blaize crashed into the rubble, the counter catching her off guard. Her senses were reeling as she picked herself up, a large gash along her forehead caused by the rubble quickly stitching itself back up. She was starting to wonder if grabbing Siobhan and Ben and getting them both to safety first would've been a better idea.

'**Foolish girl. You seek to destroy me, the Avatar of the Sickness, by using _my own powers?_**' The Avatar of the Sickness spat. '**Your arrogance will be your undoing!**'

Before she could escape, the Avatar had swept her up in one massive hand and held her up to its ugly face. The miasma that surrounded it didn't seem to affect her other than make her want to throw up. Luckily for her, she was able to suppress her gag reflex.

'**I thought you would put up much more of a fight than this,**' the Avatar snarled as he watched her try to wriggle free out of his vice-like grip. '**I will let you see this world once more, without your powers, and then I will take pleasure in dissecting you alive… hearing your screams echo across this barren city.**'

As Blaize pounded on his hand, trying to get free, the Avatar of the Sickness seemed to grin with malicious joy.

'**I will use you as an example to all humanity… none… may escape from the grasp of the Sickness! Know this, obstinate female. I can take away the Sickness just as easily as I can spread it. We shall see what it does to _you!_**'

Blaize tried to wriggle free once more, but then she felt she was suddenly getting weaker. Her veins were now showing as a disturbing web of blue as she felt the Sickness and her consciousness being drained from her.

Her struggling stopped as her eyes closed. Her body was now too weak to fight anymore.

'**Pathetic weakling…**' The Avatar of the Sickness spat as he tossed her limp body towards Ben and Siobhan, who had just managed to pick themselves up. '**You two-**' He stopped suddenly and looked around as Ben and Siobhan knelt beside the unconscious Blaize.

A tear rolled down Siobhan's cheek as hopelessness washed over her. It would take a miracle to save them, to save humanity, now.

And a miracle they would get.

Behind them, Ben heard the footfalls of someone behind him, and he turned around.

'What the-'

Before he could say anything else, a figure grabbed him, Siobhan and the unconscious Blaize, and with the strength of a Leader Sickened, carried them to safety as it leapt away from the bewildered Avatar of the Sickness, denying him his prize.

As Tiffany Glaices made her escape with the three survivors, she heard the Avatar of the Sickness roar in fury.

'**NOOOO! _AFTER THEM!_**' he screeched. But she was already moving faster than the average Leader Sickened, and she knew that whatever the Avatar of the Sickness would send after her wouldn't be fast enough to catch her. She'd be able to lose them easily in the alleyways that were her home.

As she leapt from one wall to another, she quickly disappeared into the darkness.

After a few minutes of jumping from wall to wall through Auckland City's alleyways, Tiffany landed in front of the doorway to her safehouse. Letting go of Ben and Siobhan, she helped them back up to their feet using her free hand while keeping the unconscious Blaize under her right arm.

'Holy crap, I think I know why Blaize doesn't just carry us around,' Ben said, holding his head as he tried to remember which way was up.

Siobhan, however, recovered her wits faster as she looked at Tiffany.

'You… you're Tiffany Glaices, aren't you?' she asked her, identifying her by the blue jacket and her hair.

Tiffany nodded.

'And you're Siobhan Skibursky, one of Blaize's friends,' she replied, looking her over carefully.

'You should know. You're psychic.'

Again, she nodded, and without a word, walked inside her safehouse, a suspiciously recently-repaired red steel door creaking noisily as it swung open, revealing a brightly-lit indoor basketball court. Ben and Siobhan followed after her, and closed the door behind them as Tiffany lay Blaize down onto a bench, crossing her arms over her chest.

Siobhan walked up to her unconscious friend while Ben barred the door with benches and looked at her limp form as she tried to hold back tears.

'What… what happened to her?' she asked Tiffany.

'I don't know,' the psychic replied, sighing. 'Perhaps the one who helped me out might be able to explain this.'

At that, Siobhan stared at Tiffany.

'There's someone else here?'

She didn't respond. Instead, she just kept looking at the unconscious Blaize. She placed a finger on Blaize's neck, but then Siobhan grabbed it and pulled her finger away. Tiffany's gaze immediately switched over to Siobhan, regarding her with a glare that would've intimidated anyone else.

'Don't… touch… her,' Siobhan said slowly and venomously, returning her glare. It was obvious that she didn't trust Tiffany enough. Tiffany simply withdrew her finger from Siobhan's grip, and her gaze turned into one of examination.

'There's more of a relationship between both you and Blaize than would meet the eye,' she noticed as her eyes narrowed. 'Romantic, perhaps?'

It was at that Siobhan bristled.

'Stay… out… of… my… head…' she said threateningly. Well, two could play at that game.

'Look. I know you're Blaize's friend. I know that you're her lover. I know more than you do about what's going on at the moment. And one thing you've got to learn… is that with one of my hands, your head will come off with just a twist. I saved your life just then, and I can take it away just as easily,' she replied venomously and with authority. 'Now. Shut up, and let me check her pulse.'

Tiffany's gamble to intimidate Siobhan had worked. She'd sighed, defeated, but she still maintained an aura of hate towards Tiffany that the psychic could notice, even without her powers.

But she knew she had a right to be angry. She'd just technically lost her best friend and lover.

Sighing, she placed her finger back on Blaize's neck. To her relief, she could feel Blaize's pulse, although it was too weak to be heard.

'She's alive,' she said soon after, which received a sigh of relief from Siobhan. 'Although I'm not sure what's happened to her. It's like she's slipped into a super-coma or something. Her pulse, although present, is extremely weak.'

She nodded and turned towards Siobhan and leaned in towards her.

'By the way, don't think I'm going after Blaize. I'm not lesbian,' she whispered to her. She could feel Siobhan's defensive attitude towards her instantly disappear. 'Um… well, just wondering - is Ben, er…'

She twirled her finger around the end of her ponytail as she tried to find the right word.

'Single?' Siobhan whispered back, relieved that Tiffany wasn't interested in Blaize and hastily trying to make that situation permanent. 'Of course. No girl at school seems to find him attractive.'

'Ah. Good. Erm… what happened to his leg?'

'It got bitten off by a Leaper two days ago. His replacement's a mini-flamethrower that a nano-engineer attached,' Siobhan explained. 'Wait. You're psychic. Shouldn't you know this?'

'Well, being psychic for me doesn't work all the time,' Tiffany admitted. 'Half the time I can tell everything about a person, the other half, I've got just as much of an idea of them as you have.'

Tiffany leaned away as she noticed Ben walking towards them after pushing the last of the benches into place.

'So… is Sonja going to be okay?' he asked Tiffany uncertainly.

'Yeah. She should be fine. I'm not sure what it is that's happened to her, though.'

A few quiet seconds passed.

The silence was suddenly interrupted as the screeching of the red steel door could be heard. Ben and Siobhan tore their attention to it, and to their surprise, the door was opening despite the benches stacked on it, and a figure dressed in black camouflage armour with a hood entered, closing the door shut behind him and looking at the three teenagers before taking off the hood.

'**I think I can explain what's happened to Blaize,**' Norman Skibursky said.

The moment Norman took off his hood, Siobhan grabbed her portable howitzer from her back and aimed it at the Leader Sickened, and Ben did the same.

'N… N… Norman?' Siobhan almost stuttered her brother's name as her hands started to shake. Out of everything, she hadn't expected this.

'**Siob. Ben. Put your weapons down, and I will explain everything,**' Norman continued.

'So you can do what, exactly? Turn us into Leader Sickened without a fight?' Siobhan straightened her aim towards Norman's head. 'I don't think so.'

Tiffany realized that Siobhan was about to pull the trigger, so jumped and landed in front of Norman defensively, blocking her shot.

'Siobhan. Put the gun down. He's with us,' she said, sticking out her hands to try and emphasize her message. 'He's the one who helped me out,' she added.

Siobhan raised an eyebrow at her.

'Wait, what? Norman's with _us?_' she spat. 'And he _helped_ you? Did he tell you that he tried to _kill us_ this morning?'

'Look. He's the one who helped me out. How do you think I got my powers?'

Siobhan, knowing how futile it was to argue with Tiffany, sighed, and lowered her weapon, Ben doing the same. She sank to her knees, and to Ben and Tiffany's surprise, began to sob. Norman noticed this and leapt towards Siobhan, landing in front of her, going on one knee and putting his cold, pale hands on her shoulders.

'**Siob. Siob. Look at me. I'm here,**' he soothed. As Siobhan raised her head, she looked into Norman's glowing eyes, and for the first time since he'd been turned into a Leader Sickened, she saw her brother.

She leaned forward and started to cry on his shoulder.

'I just… I just don't… I just don't know what to do anymore…' she cried. 'First you're gone, and then Blaize is gone, and then…'

Norman held his sister tightly as she let the horrors of recent events escape.

'**Hey. Don't worry. I'm here.**'

After a minute of sobbing, Siobhan looked at Norman behind her green eyes.

'**Hey. You might not know the way for now, but I do,**' Norman said, giving her an empathetic smile.

'But… but I thought you were dead… for good…' Siobhan sniffed as she wiped her eyes.

'Yeah, what happened, Norm?' Ben butted in. Almost instantly, Norman and Siobhan glared at him, and he started to back off as he realized it wasn't wise to ruin the moment.

Norman sighed as he looked at the three of them, and began to explain.


	8. Part Seven

A/N: This is the second-to-last Part in this "short story series". Please, I beg of you, my readers, give me some reviews! :D Enjoy :D

_Part Seven: Rainbow's End, New Zealand, 7:30 AM, 23rd December, 2012, 15 Hours Earlier_

_A__s the Rough Riders helicopter departed from Rainbow's End, Norman's head watched them leave, one eyelid slowly opening as his corpse lay on the ground of Rainbow's End.__As the sun played shadows along the many scars he'd gathered during his short time as a Leader Sickened, the eye, with what little life remained, twitched with one sentient emotion behind it – anger._

_Large, meaty footsteps could be heard entering the courtyard as something truly monstrous emerged into the light of the sun. _

_It looked like a chimpanzee twice the size of a Tank, dried blood splatters all over its black fur with open wounds that consistently leaked pus and other disgusting substances as it turned its ugly head towards the decapitated body of Norman Skibursky, its miasma moulding itself around the corpse._

_The Avatar of the Sickness reached out and grabbed Norman's right shoulder and held it up to its right eye, the left one missing from its encounter with Captain Cale days before._

'_You... you may still be of use to me...__' the thing craned what remained of its neck, examining the corpse. '__The Sickness... demands it...__'_

_Shaking its head, the creature grabbed Norman's head and slung the rest of the burnt corpse over a heavily infected shoulder before shambling off into the large, green building nearby. _

_It had alot of work to do._

_*****************_

_Hours later, the revived Norman Skibursky was perched on top of a large building, watching as some of his brother Sickened shambled across the streets almost mindlessly as the afternoon sun warmed his pale skin._

_His clawed hand instinctively brushed his neck to the stitches the Avatar of the Sickness had re-attached his head, closed his eyes, and sighed._

_He remembered having his head being ripped off by Blaize back at Rainbow's End, and then waking up soon after on a hospital bench, where he first met the Avatar of the Sickness in the flesh. He remembered instinctively attacking him, but the Avatar held him back easily and forgave him, much like a priest, before introducing himself. _

_Norman had been brought back from the dead using the spinal fluid of five Leader Sickened, as well as some of the Sickness in its pure form, which the Avatar of the Sickness used to kick-start Norman's regenerative abilities. When he asked the Avatar why, he simply replied that he was the only one who'd managed to defeat Captain Cale, his previous "Champion", in single combat with ease._

_It was then he started to learn more about the Sickness, apart from its ability to destroy and liberate people. The Avatar of the Sickness taught him the horrors and the errors of humanity, and showed him how it was he planned to change the world for the better once everyone had been liberated._

_It all was grandiose, and Norman had instantly agreed to be the Avatar of the Sickness' right-hand man. After killing pocket groups of survivors without mercy and savouring their deaths, things had started to get better._

_Or so he had thought._

_If the Sickness was such a holy crusade to help save people and kill those that would try and stop it from saving everyone, then why did they kill innocents that didn't fight back? _

_Group after group he massacred, Norman found that the survivors were starting to put ideas into his head before he killed them, telling him that the Sickness was propaganda and that if they were supposed to be helping the world, why did they persist in doing what they did when people had made it clear that they didn't want to be liberated? _

_The Avatar of the Sickness counselled him, rebuking their ideals and reigniting Norman's faith in the Sickness, but still their ideals stuck in his diseased mind._

_It had all come to a head when Norman had found one particular group where he found someone he knew from his past life._

_His homeroom teacher from St. Monica's College, Mrs. Sarah Smith, had tried to hide from him when he massacred the five other members of her group. When he found her, she was sobbing in a corner in a store, holding her newborn baby, Nathan, who was crying in her arms._

'_So, you've come to finish the job, have you?' she wailed at him as he entered the room she'd tried to hide in. 'If you'll just allow me to say one-'_

_She stopped as she recognised him._

'…_Norman? Norman Skibursky?' She hugged her baby tighter as he nodded slowly. 'Norman, what have they done to you? The Sickness… it's turned you into a monster! It's filled you with its lies!'_

_Tears had rolled down her face as she stared him down._

'_Think back, Norman. Think back to when this world wasn't affected by the Sickness. This… this Avatar of the Sickness is using you to destroy the world! Norman, please, listen to me!'_

_It was then Norman began to feel doubt. He had nodded as emotion returned to him, and he began to remember. He turned to leave when he heard the Avatar of the Sickness outside._

'_Norman! What's taking so long?__' he'd screeched._

_Norman turned around to look at Mrs. Smith, who was staring at him knowingly, and, for the first time of all the survivors he'd killed, pity._

'_Do it,' she said. 'I'm done for anyway. Do it, or they'll kill you too. And remember, Norman, this world is worth saving. God have mercy on you.'_

_For the first time since his revival, he began to feel horrible about himself, but he knew he had to do it. _

'_**I'll make this quick.**__' He sighed as he took one last look at her and her baby. '__**Forgive me, Mrs Smith.**__'_

_Outside, as Mrs. Smith screamed for the last time in her life, the Avatar of the Sickness' ugly rotting face had contorted into a malicious, inhuman grin._

_Now, as Norman remembered, he shuddered. He had wished that he hadn't been revived. But he knew that he had to continue on as he watched the other common Sickened shamble around the city streets, looking for the priority target the Avatar of the Sickness wanted dead: Tiffany Glaices. As he remembered Mrs. Smith's last words, he looked beneath him._

_While the others were looking for Tiffany, he'd found her already. Using the descriptions of the girl and the place that Blaize had told him before his change into a Leader Sickened, he'd been able to track Tiffany down._

_She was good at hiding from her enemies, he had to give her that, and for good reason; the Avatar of the Sickness wanted her dead for a particularly good reason._

_From what he understood from what the Avatar of the Sickness had told him, there were only two people on the planet currently who had blood that could fight the Sickness and overcome it; Blaize and Tiffany. _

_The problem was, however, if they got infected by an almost-pure strain of the Sickness, which all Leader Sickened possessed, they would be able to take on the powers of Leader Sickened without becoming Sickened themselves, as Norman had found out the hard way back at Rainbow's End earlier that day._

_He also learned that Captain Cale had been tasked by the Avatar of the Sickness personally to kill Blaize by ripping her apart, rather than biting her, as Norman had, which would've killed her and any hope humanity had at killing the Avatar of the Sickness, as he couldn't be killed by conventional weapons, and, potentially, destroying the Sickness._

_He knew Tiffany Glaices was taking shelter in the building below. _

_Norman Skibursky now had two choices between him that could decide the outcome of the war between humanity and the Sickness and he knew he wouldn't just stand by and watch. He could rip Tiffany apart and dash any hopes of humanity being able to kill the Avatar of the Sickness. Or, he could bite her instead, causing her to become almost as hard to kill as he was, technically meaning that humanity would have the upper hand._

_Mrs. Smith's last words resounded in his head once again, and he made his decision._

_Jumping down from the building he had been perched upon, he landed in front of a large brown cloth hanging across a wall in the alleyway, and with one clawed hand, ripped the cloth free to reveal a red steel door. Looking at the door for a few seconds, he punched it, causing a large dent in it. He punched it again, and it came free from its hinges before he walked inside to find himself in the indoor basketball court Blaize had described to him._

_He looked around. Where was she?_

_Then, a loud shot rang out, and a force hit him on the side of the head hard enough that he immediately lost his footing. _

_Pulling himself up to his knees and clawing at the place he'd been shot, he pulled out a large bullet from his head and looked at it. His eyes widened as he recognised the calibre._

_.50 calibre bullets were extremely rare outside of the military, as were the guns that fired them. How the heck did-_

_A few more shots rang out, and he was forced back onto the ground again, this time seven more in the left side of his head, and now he was getting pissed. He now had a headache that now almost hurt more than when he had his head ripped off by Blaize. He was surprised now that he wasn't dead._

_Once again, he picked himself up and regained his footing, and with his hand, grabbed seven of the bullets and ripped them free before dropping them onto the ground and snarling. Looking towards the direction he'd been shot, he saw a girl standing there holding a large silver pistol, presumably either a Magnum or a Desert Eagle, her dark, deep cobalt blue eyes widened in surprise._

_Tiffany Glaices was almost exactly as how Blaize had described her, possessing a lighter shade of brown skin that reminded Norman of a half-Maori half-European and long, raven black hair tied up in a ponytail. She wore a dark blue jacket with jeans, and, despite the small amounts of blood that now stained her jacket, she looked pretty attractive._

_Right now, she was almost hyperventilating with shock._

'_How… how did you… how did you survive that?' she asked him, backing off. 'I… I know your type. You're one of those "Leader Sickened". They… they all went down with one shot from this…'_

_The gun was now shaking in her hands as Norman tried to suppress the massive amount of pain in his head. He tried to say something, but all that came out was a screech as the pain spiked for a few seconds before his regeneration kicked in, healing the wound and stopping the pain._

'_**Look. You might as well drop that pistol now. If I wanted you dead, you would be already, and even if I did, that little peashooter isn't going to stop me,**__' he said, his mouth surprising himself at that fact that he just called a gun that had almost managed to kill him a "peashooter"._

_She gasped as she dropped the massive pistol on the ground._

'_What… what do you want from me?' she asked as she finally backed up into the wall, shaking._

'_**Calm down, Tiffany. I know who you are. And no, I'm not here to kill you. I'm here to bite you, that's all.**__'_

'_Bite me?' She spat the words at him venomously. 'Don't try to sugar-coat it! You're here to turn me into a Sickened, aren't you?'_

_Norman shook his head._

'_**If I was going to try and sugar-coat this, I would be saying something about how being a Sickened's better than being human. And yet I'm not.**__' He paused as Tiffany regarded him with a baleful look. '__**Look, seriously, I've got no time for this. Sit down, and I'll explain.**__'_

_To his surprise, she did so, and he could hear her heartbeat slow down, but not enough to be relaxed, although she still was watching him cautiously._

'_Okay, then. I'll humour you. Explain why it is you haven't killed me yet.'_

'_**You know, I wasn't expecting you to actually sit down for a second there, but…what the hell,**__' Norman said, sitting down himself to show her he wasn't going to do anything._

'_The spirits around me told me that they don't think you're here to do anything bad to me,' she explained. 'I'm getting this message in particular from a Sarah Smith, who says she knows you.'_

_Norman raised an eyebrow at her._

'_**You're psychic?**__'_

'_Just explain yourself, will you?' she said flatly. 'And yes. I am.'_

_Norman coughed, more out of the fact that it reminded him that somewhere inside of him, he was still human rather than because something was irritating his throat, and began to tell her his story, right from when he was still human._

_She had frowned at him a few times, and said it herself that she didn't believe him a few times shortly after he started, but by the time he was finished, she wasn't making any more remarks._

'_**And so, that's why the Avatar of the Sickness wants you dead,**__' he finished. '__**The big kind of dead. Head on a pike, guts on the pavement, him wearing a vest made of your skin kind of dead.**__'_

_Tiffany scratched her head._

'_Hm. Well, I suppose it makes sense now,' she admitted. 'But, thing is, how do I know you're not just making this up just to turn me into a Sickened without a fight?'_

_Norman shrugged._

'_**Well, first off, your average Leader Sickened wouldn't spend this much effort trying to get an effortless bite.**__**Plus, remember, the Avatar of the Sickness wanted me to rip you apart limb from limb.**__'_

_At that, Tiffany seemed to be convinced._

'_Also, I do remember seeing your friend, Blaize, in my dreams two days ago, not to mention that the spirits think that you're genuine.' She exhaled calmly. 'Not to mention also that if you were actually following the Avatar of the Sickness' orders, I'd have been dead by now…'_

'_**Well, I guess that settles it. Let's get this done and over with.**__' Norman stood up and strode over to Tiffany, who now bared her left shoulder. '__**This'll hurt for about a few seconds, but then you won't feel it anymore.**__'_

_He sighed._

'_**Here comes the sizzling acid…**__'_

_With that, he bared his teeth, and he sunk them into her shoulder. She screamed in pain, and he let go a few seconds later, after having injected the venom into her system. _

_After letting go, he was surprised when he didn't feel anything happen to him, unlike when he'd bitten Blaize. That was, until…_

'_**Wait a minute. Is it getting cold in here?**__' he asked her._

_He was about to say something else when suddenly, his mouth started to erupt in pain. It wasn't like the acid feeling burning away at his teeth when he'd bitten Blaize – it was as if his teeth were freezing solid this time, an excruciating cold travelling down to the very roots of his teeth. _

_He punched himself in the face, causing all of his teeth to smash into tiny icy shards and the pain to end abruptly._

_While his teeth regrew, Tiffany was holding the bite marks on her shoulder gingerly, taking breaths in through clenched teeth and trying to control herself. And then, to her surprise, the pain in her shoulder stopped. She lifted her hand to find that the wound was healing over before her eyes. _

_Norman, after his teeth had regrown, looked at Tiffany._

'_**See? I told you that would happen,**__' he said. As Tiffany wiped off the blood that had come out of her shoulder and slid her jacket back over it, Norman took in a deep breath, trying to forget the pain he'd just endured once again. _

'_So… so then what happens now?' she asked him._

'_**Well. As it seems like you've yet to get accustomed to your new powers, I think this situation makes you my new protégé,**__' Norman replied, with a smirk of satisfaction on his face. '__**Until, that is, help arrives.**__' _

_Tiffany was now, technically, indestructible. The Sickness, he reckoned, would finally feel fear at last._

***************

Ben scratched his head as Norman finished recounting the events leading up to this very moment.

'So, then, I can see how that all makes sense, but that still doesn't explain what's happened to Sonja,' he pointed out, standing next to Norman.

Norman nodded, stood up, and glanced at Blaize's unconscious body for a few seconds before turning back around.

'**The Avatar of the Sickness drained what remained of the Sickness out of her**,' he said simply.

Siobhan took in a heavy breath as she'd calmed down.

'But… but isn't that a good thing?' she asked him.

'**Not necessarily,**' Norman replied. '**The way you see it, you think Blaize's powers originated from her blood, and that being infected by a Leader Sickened triggered it.**'

He sighed before continuing.

'**It didn't. It's an extremely complicated process, but I'll explain it as simply as I can. When I infected Blaize with the Sickness, her cells fought against the virus. Those cells won the battle, but not all of the Sickness was eradicated. As you saw back at Rainbow's End, the part of the Leader Sickened virus that gives us Leader Sickened inhuman regeneration, strength, speed and agility remained inside of her, available for her use. But it is still something that the Avatar of the Sickness can control, and Blaize's cells didn't win the battle against the Leader Sickened virus without being stretched to their limits.**'

Siobhan nodded.

'So, what you're saying here is that since because Blaize's cells were weakened, they had to rely on the Leader Sickened virus that remained for support, right?'

Norman nodded.

'**That is correct. Blaize's natural cells were, actually, weaker than even cells weakened by AIDS. It was because her cells relied on the Leader Sickened virus that she was able to even stay conscious in the first place.**'

He shook his head.

'**To put it short, the Leader Sickened cells were like crutches, but extremely good ones that made her perform much better than she did without them, and the Avatar of the Sickness simply took those away.**'

Tiffany raised her finger.

'But then… what is it exactly that Blaize _is_ suffering from?' she asked Norman. 'And how do you know all this?'

Again, Norman nodded.

'**Soon after I was resurrected by the Avatar of the Sickness, I witnessed a situation where one of the Avatar of the Sickness' most recently-infected Leader Sickened had failed in some task I can't remember. He got pissed. He grabbed him, and then he drained the Sickness out of him and made him fall from grace, where he instantly fell unconscious. He then told me later what it was he did. He put the failure into a state called "Stasis", where he would remain unconscious until either the Avatar of the Sickness called him back to become a Leader Sickened once again, or when his normal human recovery managed to recover enough for him to become conscious once more.**'

'So then… so then Sonja will recover, right?' Ben asked.

'**She will. Only problem is, judging from how her body is currently reacting to being in the state of stasis-**' he placed a finger on Blaize's neck – '**it'll take her a long time before she'll be able to wake up. About ten years.**'

At that, Siobhan almost cried out in despair, and Ben shook his head.

'_**Despite that,**_' Norman continued hastily, raising a finger, '**there is still the option of kick-starting her system by re-infecting her. The only problem is, if she's re-infected by a Leader Sickened, she will most likely die. However, is that there is one exception to that particular rule – her cells will be able to "tame" the Leader Sickened virus without killing her if it came from the very source that had infected her in the first place.**'

Siobhan glanced up hopefully at Norman, realizing where this was going to lead.

'You. You're the one who infected her in the first place. That means that you can bring her back,' Siobhan said, connecting what Norman had said together, 'by biting her.'

He nodded.

'**If you'll allow me to, of course,**' he added. '**I've already lost my sister and my friends once. I don't want to lose them again.**'

Siobhan glanced over at Ben, who nodded, and turning back to Norman, she nodded as well.

With their silent approval, Norman nodded back and pulled back the fabric that covered Blaize's right shoulder, took in a deep breath in anticipation of the pain, swallowed, bared his own teeth, and sunk them into her shoulder.

Seconds later, he let go, falling to his knees and snarling in pain as Blaize's blood started to burn his teeth away once again. As soon as the pain stopped and his teeth regrew half a minute later, Norman glanced over at the unconscious Blaize.

Nothing had happened.

Despair started to well up inside of Siobhan as she knelt next to Blaize.

'It's not working…' she said, close to tears. 'Its not working-'

Blaize's hands suddenly clenched, her eyelids quivering, her body shaking and she was muttering something almost as if she was having a nightmare. Then, her eyes opened.

For a split second, Siobhan saw that her eyes were glowing yellow.

Then, a deafening scream ripped itself from her lips, and she bolted upright, sweat pouring off her forehead as she calmed her breathing.

'Holy _shit_,' she swore as she cupped her face into her hands and rubbed her face. '_That_ was _nasty._'

Ben sighed with relief as Siobhan looked at Blaize, frozen in place by the overwhelming relief that came over her.

'Blaize…?' she asked her.

Blaize stopped rubbing her face, and to Siobhan's relief, her red eyes now gazed back at her.

'Siob…?' she asked in return.

Siobhan gripped Blaize's shoulders, looked deep into her eyes, and-

Norman's eyes widened and he hastily turned around, facing away from the both of them. Ben's eyes also widened and his jaw dropped, and he would've continued to keep staring were it not for Norman grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around to give Blaize and Siobhan some privacy.

'**Holy **_**crap**_**, I didn't see **_**that**_** coming,**' Norman admitted.

'Me neither,' Ben agreed.

'**When the hell did this happen?**' Norman asked Ben. '**Hell, I had no idea I was competing with **_**my own sister**_** for Blaize's attention.**'

Ben nodded.

'Hell if I know. Jeee-sus.'

Ten seconds later, Blaize and Siobhan separated.

'Next time, I won't do anything that puts you or Ben in danger,' Blaize promised, pressing her forehead and the tip of her nose on Siobhan's. 'Ever.'

She pulled away as her nose noticed the familiar scent of lavender perfume. She turned to her left and looked at Tiffany, who had been watching silently.

'Tiffany?' she asked her. The psychic nodded. 'Look, I know that what I did probably put your life in danger. And, well, I'd just like to say thanks for getting me, Ben and Siobhan to safety.'

Tiffany smiled back at her.

'Don't mention it,' she replied.

Blaize was about to continue when she also noticed a different smell in the air. It was one she remembered well.

She turned around and looked at the figure standing next to Ben, his back towards her.

'Norman?'

At that, Norman sighed, and turned around, looking back at Blaize. He was about to open his mouth to try and explain himself, but to his surprise, Blaize had raised her finger.

'Wait,' she said. 'I know what you did. I'm not sure how, but while I was unconscious, I heard bits of what you said. And it's good to have you back on our side, Norm.'

She gave him a smile, and he so closed his mouth. She turned towards Siobhan.

'Siob. I think it's a good time to radio Captain Greg, don't you?'

At that, Siobhan nodded, and took out the handheld radio from her trench coat, and after fiddling around with the knobs, it crackled to life.

'Captain Greg, you there?' Siobhan asked through the radio.

Gunfire from the helicopter's mounted machine gun could be heard. Captain Greg's voice came through a few seconds later.

'Siobhan! You found Tiffany yet?' his voice yelled into the radio as the machine gun stopped firing.

'We've got her,' Siobhan replied. 'We could use an extraction.'

A few more bursts of gunfire occupied the handheld radio's speakers.

'Got it! I won't be able to do the extraction, though- oh, crap-'

The screech of a Leaper could be heard, followed by the sounds of a scuffle, which stopped after a quarter of a minute after the bark of a pistol shot.

'Captain Greg! You okay?' Siobhan asked through the radio, concerned.

'I'm fine!' Captain Greg's voice replied. 'Look, I can't do the extraction. The assault on Ash Base is underway, and I can't go over to pick you up! There's no helicopters available, so you're gonna have to stay put until tomorrow morning!'

Siobhan looked at Blaize nervously for a few moments before she nodded.

'Got it. When will we get extracted, sir?'

'Probably around nine tomorrow morning! Same spot I dropped you guys off at! Damnit, gotta go! Captain Greg out!'

At that, Captain Greg's radio cut out as Blaize looked at the others around her.

'Well, you heard the man,' she said. 'Looks like we're going to have to set up here for the rest of the night. Norman, can you stay?'

Norman shook his head.

'**Afraid not. Best to make the Avatar of the Sickness think that I'm still looking for you.**'

He turned towards Siobhan, reached into a pocket on his camouflage armour and produced a small black pouch and handed it to her.

'**Mum and Dad said for me to give you this should we be forced to be separated. I would've given it to you earlier, but it was stashed at the bottom of my bag back on the St. Monica's bus. I added a few things of my own to it, too.**' He sighed and turned around to leave as Siobhan held the bag gingerly. '**I'll check up on you guys tomorrow morning, before nine.**'

Blaize nodded as Norman left, closing the red steel door behind him. Tiffany looked at the three of them as they watched Norman leave.

'I'll get us some mattresses from out back,' she said before walking towards a door on the opposite side of the underground basketball court. 'We're gonna need the sleep.'

Half an hour later, after dinner, Blaize sat on her mattress, watching Ben, Siobhan and Tiffany sleep as she took first watch. Siobhan and Tiffany had taken off their jackets to sleep, and the both of them were curled up in foetal position while Ben simply lay straight on his back, snoring lightly.

Her gaze moved across from her sleeping friends to the possessions pile that had been placed near the fire. Everything was silent except for the crackling of the flames as it burned through garbage.

There, she saw a pouch that protruded from Tiffany's jacket, a dark blue linen one where she probably kept all of her possessions, since she'd taken it off to sleep. Next to the jacket was the pouch that Norman had given to Siobhan.

The contents of the black pouch intrigued Blaize. Soon after Siobhan had opened it, she pulled out a small book with a simple black leather cover. The intriguing thing was that soon after she'd looked through the pages, she started to sob, putting her back to the wall and snapping the book shut before Blaize could see what was inside.

Blaize wondered what it was inside that moved Siobhan so.

Making sure that Siobhan and Tiffany were asleep, she crept over to the possessions pile, and silently opened Tiffany's pouch, the zipper making only a faint sound as she pulled out a few a small diary.

Opening it, a few pictures fell out. She picked them up and looked at them.

In a few of them, she could see Mike, Ashley and Bernie Calhoun beaming back at her, with Tiffany beside them, smiling. Then there were pictures of her relatives and her parents. As Blaize looked through the pictures, she saw one of the entire family together, posed for a photo. From what she gathered, Tiffany had a baby brother and an older sister.

Blaize could almost feel the emotion that was put into the diary entries, both from how they were written and also, she could smell the particular pheromones that emanated from the pages which gave away the feelings of the writer. In these photos, joy was the primary emotion here.

She placed the photos that fell out back in their place and began to flick through the diary's contents, stopping at December the 22nd. More photos fell out.

She picked them up, and to her horror, she saw Tiffany's family members. But they weren't the same. They had become Sickened. Little notes were scribbled underneath each picture, along with dried wet patches Blaize quickly guessed were dried tears.

"Auntie Mana. Killed this morning. Crowbar found in garage," was the note of one picture that showed the splattered brains of an infected woman Blaize recognised from an earlier photo.

She stared at the photos, looking at the horror the Sickness had wrecked upon Tiffany's family as she turned to the very last photo in the distressing long line of dead relatives Tiffany was forced to kill.

It was her baby brother, Max. Tiffany had to shoot him in the head with her Desert Eagle to end his suffering, and, from what her diary read, to stop him from infecting others. That photo was the most tear-stained. The rest of the photos that fell out from December 22nd all emanated hopelessness and grief, but this one radiated the very worst of them all.

As her nose picked up the pheromones, she almost recoiled in sorrow.

Immediately putting the photos back in and shutting the diary, she replaced it back in the dark blue pouch and tucked in silently back into Tiffany's jacket, the background of her new friend distressing Blaize deeply.

She then opened Siobhan's pouch and produced a small, untitled book, which was the only thing inside.

She opened it gingerly, and as she looked at the very first page, she smiled, Tiffany's photos almost forgotten.

It was a picture of the four of them during Valentines Day, last year. Happier times. Ben and Norman were brandishing pink heart cards and smiling behind them, Ben's card with Siobhan's name on it, and Norman's with the words: "SONJA, The Very Best Friend A Guy Can have."

Blaize and Siobhan were sitting in front of them, simply smiling at the camera as Siobhan held her pink card with the words "BEN. You Silly Pyromaniac." Blaize wasn't holding a card, simply smiling into the camera.

Tears pushed themselves out of her eyes as the memories flooded in. Again, she could smell joy.

She turned the pages to find more pictures awaiting her of different memories she had with Norman and Siobhan, as well as some she didn't know, and little messages scribbled in for Siobhan by her parents with words of encouragement. Blaize felt her heart throb as she remembered her parents. She hoped like hell that they were doing fine.

When she reached the end of the book, she realized why it was that Siobhan had cried.

There, stuck at the very end of the book, was a picture of the Skiburskys staring back at her, the family of four smiling back at her, with Ben and Blaize sticking out from the edges of the assembled family and smiling. But the thing that nearly brought Blaize to tears was the date scribbled at the very bottom of the picture: "September, Thursday, 12th, 2010."

She put the book down, her eyes widening and looking at the picture longingly as she covered her mouth with her hands, attempting to block out the overwhelming smell of grief that emanated from the page. That was the very last picture the elder Skiburskys ever had with their children, as the car accident that claimed their lives and left Norman and Siobhan orphans happened the day after.

'Oh, God…'

The note scribbled underneath the photo was simple: "Remember, we always will love you. – Mum and Dad" Although they weren't her parents, those very words felt as if they had come from her parents' mouths.

She closed the book hurriedly and silently, placed it back in the pouch, and retreated back to her mattress, where silently, she cried herself to sleep.


	9. Part Eight

A/N: Please, guys, this is the last chapter of Left 4 Dead: Lambs 2 Slaughter! Could I get some reviews please? Please? Pretty please? It feels weird having gone through the entire story and to have not gotten a single review :(

Also, I'm still polishing the story off, and Part Eight'll most likely undergo some big changes. Ah well. Enjoy, anyways :D

_Part Eight: Auckland City, New Zealand, 4:30 AM, 24th December, 2012_

Blaize was awakened by the sound of the red steel door creaking open the following morning.

Getting up immediately, she firstly checked her watch. It was four-thirty in the morning. Four and a half hours before Captain Greg would pick them up. Or so she thought.

She looked at Tiffany, who'd woken up.

'**Guys?**' Norman's voice came out. He closed the door behind him as he walked over to the both of them. '**You gotta get up. There's been a change in plans.**'

At that, Blaize immediately shook Siobhan awake as Tiffany managed to wake Ben up with a simple yet well-placed poke to the sides.

'Wassit?' Ben groaned as he sat up.

'**You guys better get ready,**' Norman said hurriedly. '**And you'd better get ready **_**now**_**. The Avatar of the Sickness has managed to pinpoint your location.**'

Blaize raised an eyebrow at him.

'What?' she blurted out in surprise.

'**One of the other Leader Sickened found you guys while you slept. I don't know who dropped watch, but now he's off to tell the Avatar where you guys are. You've got about ten minutes to get out, and half an hour to get there.**'

Siobhan's jaw hanged agape in surprise, staring at her brother for a few seconds before she reached out for her stuff.

'But… but what about the evac?' she asked him.

'**Don't worry. I got Sergeant Cyrus to send a message over to Captain Greg. He's sending Mike Calhoun and Dr. Livingston to pick you guys up at the evac point as we speak.**'

Ben nodded as he gathered up his stuff.

'There's something else, isn't there?' he asked Norman, noticing the uncertain look on his face.

Norman sighed.

'**The Avatar of the Sickness also knows where your escape vehicle is going to land to pick you up,**' he admitted.

Blaize and Siobhan's jaws dropped.

'How the hell is that possible?' Blaize asked him.

Norman just sighed again.

'**You remember Captain Cale, right?**' Norman asked them. '**He used to be Captain of the Rough Riders until he became a Leader Sickened. Thing is, he had a handheld radio that still worked with plenty of battery and was tuned in to the Army Command Channel even after his change.**'

Things started to make more sense to the teenagers now.

'So that's how he knew we were going to be at St. Heliers,' Siobhan said, the coin dropping. 'The Avatar of the Sickness has the radio now, doesn't he?'

Norman nodded.

'**I just found out he that possessed it. I know what this looks like, but I wouldn't betray you guys. Not again. However, the Avatar of the Sickness will most likely be preparing his armies immediately to stop you from escaping. That means I have to be there with them when it marches.**'

'But… but you can still help us out, right?' Ben asked him.

'**I can. However, the thing is, the Avatar of the Sickness doesn't know I've turned. Also, the Avatar of the Sickness has one flaw – the way I've seen it, he'll probably think that he needs only a few Leader Sickened and a horde of commons to finish you off.**'

He sighed.

'**If he becomes suspicious or learns that I've turned, he'll gather more Leader Sickened for his assault, which will most likely mean that it'll be far more than the four of you can handle. Also, I'm his champion. I'll be able to do more damage and increase the chances of you guys escaping if I don't reveal my true allegiance until the last moment.**'

At that, Siobhan nodded.

'Well, best you get going now,' Siobhan said, breathing deeply and sighing. She gave her brother a tight hug. 'Take care of yourself, Norm.'

After she let go, Norman simply nodded.

'**Take care of yourselves. Know that I'll miss all of you when this is over,**' he said.

He turned to leave before Blaize stopped him.

'Wait a sec,' she said.

Norman turned towards her and looked at her expectantly as she strode towards him.

'I… I'd just like to say thanks. Thanks for what you've done for us.'

She placed her hands on his shoulders, smiled, raised her eyebrows, and blushed.

'I know you've had a crush on me for quite a long time, and seeing what you've done, I think you're worthy of this.'

She leaned forward and gave Norman an affectionate peck on the cheek.

At this, Norman just smiled back at her.

'Now,' she said, still blushing, 'don't ask for another one. Go. You need to be out there.'

At this, Norman nodded, and with that, he disappeared out the door.

As Blaize watched him go, she heard the sound of a barely muffled laugh from her brother behind her, and she turned around to see the others looking at her.

'What?' she said. 'Don't look at me like that! He deserved it!'

'Yeah, yeah, _sure,_' Ben said, squinting at her accusingly in his humorous manner. 'He _deserved_ it, all right. First, you give him a peck on the cheek. Then, you're hugging and all. And _then-_'

He would've continued if it weren't for Tiffany giving him a friendly nudge in the ribs. Blaize sighed and shook her head, with a smile on her face.

'Come on. Fun's over. I think it's time we began moving,' she said, grabbing her assault rifle from her back and looking at the others.

It was time they got out of this hellhole.

As the survivors departed the safehouse after they'd gathered their things, the surrounding area was suspiciously quiet.

Blaize recognised the unnatural silence, the feeling she was experiencing reminding her of the exact same feeling that she had when the survivors had left the Mission Bay safehouse two days ago, and she knew that this was the precursor to a Sickened swarm.

Tiffany looked around cautiously, and after nodding at Blaize, the teenagers started their journey to their landing zone.

'Blaize?' Siobhan piped up as they walked down the morning moonlight-illuminated ruins of Queen Street.

Blaize's red eyes turned towards her as she brushed aside a few of the long strands of her crimson-red hair away from her face.

'Yeah?' she said.

'Well… whatever happens, just remember that I love you.'

Blaize gave her a smile.

'Love ya too,' she replied. She looked at Ben, who was currently showering Tiffany with cheesy pick-up lines, which, to Blaize's surprise, she seemed to enjoy. 'Speaking of love, it looks like Ben's already smitten with someone.'

Siobhan looked at Ben and Tiffany for a few seconds before turning back towards Blaize and smiling, her long brown hair flowing behind her in the wind.

'She was wondering if he was single, actually,' she replied.

'Really? I'm surprised she's find Ben attractive.'

'So did I.'

A period of silence between the two reigned.

'Just wondering-' Blaize started, but then a familiar bestial roar from down the street interrupted her.

'Oh, _shit_, _RUN!_' Ben shouted as everyone took out their weapons. Looking behind her, Blaize saw the large silhouette of the Avatar of the Sickness bounding down the street after them.

And ran the group did. Ben and Siobhan were running as fast as their legs could carry them while Blaize and Tiffany remained again, spraying accurate shots into the Avatar of the Sickness as he shoved and punched wrecked cars and other detritus out of his path, intent on ripping the four of them to shreds.

One of the wrecked cars he punched away sailed through the air towards Ben and Siobhan, and Blaize had to tackle them both out of the way before the car landed in the very spot the both of them were seconds before. Picking themselves up, the three of them knew the Avatar of the Sickness was getting closer.

Suddenly, the radio on Siobhan's trench coat crackled to life.

'This is Rough Rider Gryphon Purifier Bomber A2-28, as well as Angel Purifier A6-13,' a voice came in. 'The Big Boss said that you could use some help. Affirmative?'

'Not just now!' Siobhan yelled back through the radio as they started running, the loud screech of the Avatar of the Sickness following soon after. He was getting closer, and nothing-

Siobhan stopped for a second, noticing the ruined St. Monica's College bus just to their right. It was leaking petrol, probably from the efforts of scavengers earlier on, and an idea popped into her head as she started running again.

'Wait! Purifiers, do you have line of sight on Queen Street?' she asked. Up ahead, in the sky, she could see the two bomber jets circling around wharf.

'Affirmative.'

'Do you see the bus wreck?'

'Copy that.'

'I'm requesting a bombing run on that area – danger close, Priority Target _ALPHA!_'

'Roger that. God's wrath falls for the heavens.'

Enraged that his prey were getting away, the Avatar of the Sickness started to increase his speed, oblivious to the sound of the bomber jets as they made their pass, their engines screeching as they began their descent.

Blaize turned back towards the bus, and saw the Avatar of the Sickness land on top of it just seconds before Gryphon A2-28 finished its pass, and the bus exploded in a massive fiery cloud that lit up the whole of Queen Street.

'HOLY SHIT!' Ben yelled out loud and stopping in his tracks, looking at the fiery pit that used to be the St. Monica's bus and cheering. 'That was _BEAUTIFUL!_'

'I think the target's down,' Gryphon A2-28 said. 'Ground team, confirm.'

Siobhan was about to reply when she heard the roar of the Avatar of the Sickness from the ruins of the bus, and it was definitely pissed off now.

'Negative! Negative! The target is still alive, I repeat, the Avatar of the Sickness is alive!' she yelled into the radio before running again.

'Roger that, making in for another pass.'

Blaize immediately looked at Siobhan as they ran.

'What?' she asked. 'Call it off – we got too close on that last one-'

Before Siobhan could do anything else, the roar of the jets could be heard, and more explosions could be heard from the annihilated wreckage of the St. Monica's bus as the Avatar of the Sickness was bombed yet again.

But Blaize knew that right now, the Avatar was the least of their concerns. She instinctively tackled Siobhan to the ground next to a ruined car on its side. It was an action that probably saved both of their lives.

A stray bomb fell from the passing jets and exploded on the other side of the car both girls were on the ground next to. The explosion sent the car flying, just passing over their heads by mere inches, the shrapnel from the blast embedded in its underbelly.

Siobhan gasped in shock at just how close to death she and Blaize just been. A few more steps in any direction and she would've been raked by the shrapnel or hit by the car. She immediately took out her radio as a ringing sound resounded across her ears.

'_SHIT!_ STOP THE BOMBING RUN!' she screamed into the radio. 'I REPEAT, _STOP THE GODDAMN BOMBING RUN!_'

But it was already too late. As the second jet passed by, Blaize saw one of the bombs descend upon Ben and Tiffany. Her eyes widened in shock as the bomb exploded on a car a few meters away from them.

The force of the impact knocked Ben from his feet and sent him flying into the hood of a car and Tiffany into a wall.

'_BEN!_' The cry tore itself from Blaize's lips, and she leapt towards where her brother was as Siobhan picked herself up. She landed next to him as he bounced off the car and onto the ground. Tiffany joined her soon after as Siobhan ran up to them. She was going to gnarl those pilots' heads off herself if something bad had happened to her little brother. 'Ben! Say something!' she almost sobbed.

Ben groaned.

'Tha…' he managed to get out at first before slowly pulling himself back up to a sitting position and gasping for air. 'That… was _awesome!_'

Blaize smirked. If Ben was in the mood to crack jokes he couldn't have been hurt bad. He pulled himself back up to his feet and looked forwards.

'The landing pad's close!' he yelled, probably suffering from a ringing in his ears as well. 'We'd better move!'

To Siobhan's relief, the bomber jets had retreated, and were nowhere to be seen. She turned towards Blaize.

'Look, look, I'm real, _real_ sorry about that,' she started, but Blaize put her index finger to Siobhan's lips.

'We'll talk about this later,' she said sternly her. Siobhan wasn't sure wether or not Blaize was angry at her or not. Nonetheless, she nodded, and the group started to run once more, the enraged screeching of the Avatar of the Sickness echoing across the street as Blaize hoped that Mike Calhoun and Dr. Livingston were waiting for them.

When they arrived at the helipad, however, there was no one there to greet them except for the sight of muzzle flashes and faint sounds of gunfire around Rangitoto Island in the distance told them that the battle for Ash Base was still raging.

However, hope swelled up inside them as they spotted a reasonably large white speck on the helipad, and Blaize's enhanced eyesight let her see two smaller specks run towards the helicopter, which she assumed were Mike and Dr. Livingston.

'They're coming,' she said to the others, as they couldn't see what she saw. 'They should be here in five minutes or so.'

'Blaize?' Tiffany asked her. 'I don't think we've _got_ five minutes…'

Blaize turned around, and to her horror, she saw the Avatar of the Sickness perched on top of a building in front of the wharf's front gates, staring at the survivors hungrily, with five Leader Sickened flanking him on the building, one of them Blaize recognised as Norman.

The Avatar of the Sickness leapt off the building and landed a short distance away from the teenagers, the four Leader Sickened and Norman doing the same.

**'You have made a valiant effort to escape, children...**' the Avatar said, the heavy damage the jet bombers had laid upon him causing him plenty of pain as now the smell of burnt flesh and boiled away animal fat was added to the disgusting menagerie of gag-reflex-inducing smells that he possessed. **'But it will be all for naught. You may have found a way to regain your powers, Blaize, but this is where yours and Tiffany's luck… ends.**'

He seemed to grin at them with what was left of his simian mouth.

**'Leave none alive. Rip them apart. Make them suffer. _Kill them._'**

With that, the Leader Sickened attacked, leaping at the teenagers, with Norman at their head.

But at the last moment, since he landed first, he spun around, and catching his fellow Leader Sickened by surprise, he tripped one up and broke his back on his knee before spinning around, catching another one by the neck and slammed him down onto the ground and snapped his neck.

The other two spun around and stared at their erstwhile brother. The Avatar of the Sickness was instantly taken by surprise.

'**Norman! What the **_**hell**_** are you doing?**' one of the Leader Sickened screeched at him as the two victims of Norman's sneak attack struggled to stand up.

Norman ignored him and faced the Avatar of the Sickness, who'd realized what had happened.

'**Blaize, Tiffany! Take out the healthy ones! I'll keep the Avatar of the Sickness busy! Go!**' he called out to the teenagers.

With that, he leapt at the Avatar of the Sickness, avoiding his blows as the massive creature tried to swat down its erstwhile champion as Tiffany and Blaize charged the two healthy Leader Sickened and Ben and Siobhan took on the injured ones.

Blaize ducked as the healthy Leader Sickened she engaged in combat swung a punch at her, and she retaliated in kind by punching him square in the throat, sending him flying as Tiffany blocked a swipe from her opponent and then followed that up with another punch, which sent him sprawling onto the ground.

As one of the injured Leader Sickened, the one with the broken back, tried to swipe Siobhan, she stepped back and avoided the blow before she kicked him in the chest and fired a howitzer shot at him, leaving a large hole in his chest while Ben sidestepped the one with the broken neck as it tried to kick him away, and the side of his chainsaw-flamer slammed into its head, forcing him to take a few steps back as Ben turned on his flamers, keeping the injured Leader Sickened away from him as he glanced at Norman as he took on the Avatar of the Sickness.

Norman had landed on the left of the Avatar of the Sickness and leapt backwards to avoid a blow that pulverized the concrete ground. Even though it was weakened by the bombing run earlier, it was still quick enough to snatch Norman in mid-air and brought his struggling, erstwhile champion in front of its burnt, ugly face.

**'So, you were the one who gave Blaize back her powers,**' he spat as Norman pounded on his hand, squirming in the creature's iron grip. **'You ungrateful traitor… I should have never resurrected you.**'

He stared at Norman pitifully as he managed to give him the finger.

'**For your boss,**' Norman spat back, a grin managing to make itself apparent on his face. '**I guess I'll see you in hell.**'

At that, the Avatar of the Sickness bellowed in fury, screeching at him and beginning to drain the Sickness out of his system.

As the healthy Leader Sickened that Blaize was fighting picked himself up, she took out her axe and took a swing at his head. The blow missed, as he'd been able to duck in time to avoid the blade. She swung it back, however, and the blunt part of the axe slammed into the top of the Leader Sickened's head, and she would've swung again were it not for Tiffany's opponent snatching it out of her hands to swipe at Tiffany with it.

Undaunted, Blaize kicked the now-concussed Leader Sickened she faced in the chest, sending him sprawling. She landed on top of him, and before he could react, she ripped his head clean off with one hand.

Tiffany ducked as her opponent wildly swung Blaize's axe at her, sidestepping a vertical strike and jumping up as it tried to sweep the blade horizontally towards her ankles, missing the edge by centimetres, and she landed a kick on his head, causing the weapon to fly out of his hands violently and fall onto his back.

As he tried to get up, the last thing his surprised yellow glowing eyes saw was the inside of the barrel of Tiffany's Desert Eagle before her finger tightened on the trigger the instant later.

However, as Ben ducked another blow from the injured Leader Sickened he faced, he was wondering when he'd get a chance to strike back when all of a sudden Blaize's axe flew out of nowhere and embedded itself in his opponent's right shoulder, almost slicing the arm clean off.

As the Sickened screeched in agony, Ben took the opportunity to ram his left chainsaw-flamer up the thing's chest, and with his right chainsaw-flamer, he decapitated the Leader Sickened in one fluid move.

Siobhan, however, had no need for any extra assistance against her target. The large, gaping hole she'd blasted through his midsection with her portable howitzer had already crippled him beyond his ability to fight, and as he looked up at her one more time, she aimed the end of her howitzer at its head as it screamed its last scream before the loud shot echoed across the wharf.

Behind them, the four of them could now hear their helicopter as it arrived, but they weren't watching it arrive.

Norman had been drained of the Sickness, and he had been flung in front of Siobhan, who was now cradling her brother in her arms.

'Norm! Get up! Our rescue helicopter's here!' she cried out at him, tears starting to form on the edges of her eyes.

The Avatar of the Sickness seemed to savour the moment as it looked at Siobhan.

**'He was a traitor. He deserved what he got. And now, _you're next_.'**

With that, he drew back a massive arm, with his fingers straightened in a firm palm, his large claws sticking out like an ugly, biological spear as he saw Siobhan staring at him for the last time in her life.

And then, he thrust his arm forward.

Siobhan tried to comprehend what was happening as everything seemed to move in slow motion as the claws sped towards her stomach. And then, something pushed her out of the way.

As she landed, she looked at where she had been standing mere seconds ago, and to her horror, Norman had taken her place. He'd pushed her aside and taken the wound for her.

'_NORMAN!_'

The words ripped themselves from her lips as Norman screamed in agony, the ends of the Avatar's claws sticking out of his back. As the survivors watched in horror, the Avatar brought Norman before his ugly face once again, and examined him like a fly on the end of a skewer before flinging him onto the ground next to Siobhan, leaving a large, gaping hole through his chest.

The survivors were dumbstruck as the door to the helicopter door opened, and Mike and Dr. Livingston came out.

'Get in! Hurry!' Mike yelled, unawares of what had just happened.

Siobhan just kept staring at her dying brother, tears forcing themselves out from her eyes, and then she ripped her gaze toward the Avatar of the Sickness as he drew back his arm once again, and snarled at him in fury as she raised her portable howitzer at him, and fired.

The first shot hit him on the arm, interrupting his strike. The next one, however, managed to hit his remaining eye, rendering the monster almost blind as it roared in pain.

She would've fired more shots were it not for Blaize landing next to her, grabbing the mortally-wounded Norman and scooping her up in her free arm and taking her away from the Avatar of the Sickness before it could strike back, landing near the helicopter.

Blaize set Siobhan back onto her feet, and put the injured Norman in her arms.

'Siob! That'll do. That'll do,' she soothed as she sobbed. 'Ben, get Siobhan and Norman inside.'

Ben nodded grimly before doing so as Tiffany and Blaize ran over to Dr. Livingston, who was carrying a black device that looked like a house coffee machine.

'Quickly, put the syringes in!' Dr. Livingston ordered them as they grabbed both syringes and inserted them into each of their forearms. The blood quickly flowed into the grenade, and in the span of a few seconds, the process was complete as Dr. Livingston grabbed the grenade, sealed it off and handed it to Blaize. 'Go. You know what to do with this,' he said.

'Tiffany, get in the helicopter. I'll do this myself,' Blaize said to Tiffany as she took the grenade. Her counterpart shook her head in reply.

'The Avatar may be blinded and weakened, but his senses and strength will still make him an extremely dangerous opponent,' she replied. 'You're going to need a distraction, or else you're screwed this time.'

Blaize nodded, knowing that she wouldn't be able to talk Tiffany out of this.

'Okay. You go right, I'll go left,' she said, and at that, the both of them charged the Avatar of the Sickness.

Leaping from the ground, onto the cranes, and then back onto the ground confuse him, Tiffany took out her Desert Eagle and began to strafe in front of the Avatar of the Sickness, firing shots into his head as Blaize leapt onto the cranes to sneak up on him.

'**_GNAAAAAAH!_ I will _NOT_ be treated like a _WEAKLING!_**' the blinded Avatar screeched, and he brought his large, clawed hand down upon Tiffany, who managed to leap aside at the last moment. She bounded from the ground, towards a crane, leapt off the crane and she landed on the creature's massive arm and kept shooting as Blaize started to fire at him with her assault rifle as she leapt from the tops of the cranes.

The Avatar of the Sickness raised a hand and tried to swat at Tiffany, who jumped off, firing a few more shots at him. It was then Blaize dropped down upon him, landing on his head and delivering a quick punch to the area that could've been considered the Avatar's forehead.

'This one's for Auckland City!' she screamed, punching again. 'This one's for Ben and Siobhan!' She punched again, and then wrenched the Avatar's maw open and sticking her assault rifle in between its teeth to stop him from closing his mouth as she took out the grenade and pulled the pin. 'And this one's for _NORMAN!_'

And at that, with all her might, she threw the grenade down the Avatar's throat and retrieved her assault rifle before leaping off the Avatar's head and next to Tiffany as they watched him try to pick himself up.

**'No… the Sickness won't be stopped…**' the Avatar snarled. **'You think that Auckland's the only place being… affected? There are numerous outbreaks happening… around… the world… as I speak. Your efforts here will… have been in vain…**'

At that, he lunged towards both girls with what strength he had left, but fell short by a few meters as the sound of an explosion from inside of him could be heard.

**'No…. _NOOOOOOOOOOOO!_'**

He screeched his last as the effects of the grenade rapidly turned him into an ugly ice statue, and then, the grenade's other effect kicked in, annihilating the statue into millions of miniscule pieces, scattered to the wind like mist.

Blaize turned towards Tiffany, and she nodded before they made their way back to the helicopter as it lifted off and began its journey back to Ash Base, victorious.


	10. Epilogue

_Epilogue: Auckland City, New Zealand, 8:28 AM, 25th December, 2012_

The wind passed Blaize, blowing her long, crimson-red hair behind her as her red eyes looked far off into the distance at the rising dawn.

It had been but two days since the Avatar of the Sickness' defeat, but she knew that this war wasn't over. Although the Sickened in Auckland City were now leaderless and scattered and didn't fight back when the Rough Riders Purifier teams moved in, news had just been received from Captain Greg that, indeed, as the Avatar of the Sickness had said, there were outbreaks of viruses similar to the Sickness, the biggest one currently happening in America.

The reason why they'd only found out now was because an organisation, the Civil Emergency Defence Agency, or CEDA, had worked to keep the information secret until they realized that it was folly to try and keep the information secret when the entire world was already suffering from their own zombie apocalypses.

Thankfully enough, however, Auckland City was the place that was hardest-hit in the world. It was only here that the Sickened had leaders and avatars.

As Blaize watched the sun rise up in the distance, she remembered the Mayan prophecy that on December the 21st, 2012, an era would end and a new one would begin. She realized that the Mayans were right – her world had both ended and begun on that very date.

But she also knew that already they were rebuilding Auckland City. The Sickness was currently being put under control, and soon, the rebuilding would commence. Once again, the streets of Auckland would be bustling with people.

'Hey! Blaize! The bus to St. Monica's College is here! You coming?' a voice from down below yelled up to her.

She looked down from her perch on the top of one of the Skytower's rings and saw Tiffany waving back up to her.

'Sure! Coming down now!' she yelled back.

With that, she jumped off.

As she landed on the pavement tens of stories below softly and without injury, she found Ben and Siobhan waiting for her and Tiffany on the bus. She nodded to Tiffany as they boarded, Blaize taking a seat next to Siobhan and Tiffany sitting next to Ben.

'So, how's Norman?' Blaize asked Siobhan as she leaned on her shoulder.

'He'll live, thankfully enough,' Siobhan replied, giving her a smile. 'Turns out, the Avatar of the Sickness didn't puncture any vital organs. Also, it seems like he didn't fully drain the Sickness out of him, which means he should be able to get out of the infirmary in a week or so, since some of his regenerative abilities are still working.'

Blaize nodded as Tiffany leaned on Ben's shoulder.

'What, are you two are lovebirds now?' Blaize asked Ben. Siobhan smirked in a quiet agreement.

'Hey. We could say the same about you two,' Ben pointed out.

'Yeah,' Tiffany added.

'Yeah, but still, I've known Siob here for a while. You two just met two days ago,' Blaize pointed out. At that, Ben smiled.

'Well, whatever. Tiffany's more than enough of a Christmas present for me,' he said.

'Aw, so cute,' Siobhan said, smiling at them before looking at Blaize. 'Oh, wait, that reminds me. I've got you your Christmas present.'

She pulled out something from the seat behind her and handed it to Blaize. She instantly recognised her bag when it was placed in her hands.

'Holy crap, I thought this was gone forever!' she gasped as she opened it. 'Damn. Everything's still in one piece.'

'Merry Christmas,' Siobhan smiled at her, giving her a peck on the cheek.

Ben sighed.

'Well. I hope Mum and Dad's okay, since the Sickness is now in America.' He sighed again. 'Probably left all alone and left for dead.'

'Don't worry. They should be fine,' Siobhan said, giving him an encouraging smile.

At that, an idea hit Blaize, and she started rummaging through her bag. After a few seconds, he produced her writing pad and a pencil before putting it on the table, with "UNKNOWN TITLE" glaring up at all four of them.

With her pencil, she scribbled it out, and she wrote the words "LEFT 4 DEAD".

'Wow, nice title,' Ben whistled.

'Y'know, I think I'm gonna simplify the situation and make all of the survivors immune to the virus,' Blaize said triumphantly.

At that, the teenagers laughed as the bus started, and began its journey towards St. Monica's College, following the road and disappearing into the morning dawn.

**_The End… Or is it?_**

**_Somewhere Over America, Two Weeks Later_**

'Jesus, man, the food on this plane sucks balls,' someone said.

Private Hoffman shifted in his airline seat, his black Rough Riders combat armour making him look out of place on the passenger plane. His partner, Sergeant Daedalus, raised an eyebrow towards him.

'You keep complaining about everything,' he said as some of the civilian passengers looked their way.

'Well, hell. First, there's no military plane that we can use. Second, we have to hitch a ride on a _civilian_ plane, where the food sucks. Thirdly, _why the frak_ _is it_ that this plane's called Air New Zealand Flight 666?'

Sergeant Daedalus sighed. He looked at the monitor in front of him. It read:

"NEARING NEWBURG METRO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, AMERICA. ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 28 MINUTES."

'Look, we'll be on ground soon enough. Hang in there.'

He was interrupted as the radio on his armour crackled to life, and he answered it. A minute later, he put it down and turned it off.

'What the hell was all that about?' Private Hoffman asked him.

Sergeant Daedalus sighed again.

'Apparently, the airport's been overrun by zombies, but there's no other place we can go for fuel. We've gotta get these passengers armed in case the zombies try to swarm the plane. You go ahead and tell everyone. I'll get the guns from out back.'

Private Hoffman nodded as Sergeant Daedalus got up and strode over to the baggage area.

He opened the door and turned on the lights, looking at all the passenger baggage securely bound to the walls before the continued.

Then, he heard the sound of a little girl crying.

Who the hell could be back here?

'Hello?' he called out. 'You're not supposed to be here. Come out where I can see you.'

He scanned the room and found the little girl sitting on the floor and crying loudly. But then he saw a familiar thing crouched next to the little crying girl and his eyes widened.

'What the fu-'

Before he could finish his swear word, a piercing screech split the air, and the Leaper leapt at him.

_**The End :D I hope you enjoyed reading Left 4 Dead: Lambs 2 Slaughter, guys. I'll be working on polishing this off as well as working on other stories. Hope you guys liked the references :D**_

_**Well, 's me for now,**_

_**-Matt**_


End file.
